This was the drama of my life which I have now depicted upon paper. During three months I have been employed in this task. The memory of sorrow has brought tears; the memory of happiness a warm glow the lively shadow of that joy. Now my tears are dried; the glow has faded from my cheeks, and with a few words of farewell to you, Woodville, I close my work: the last that I shall perform.
Farewell, my only living friend; you are the sole tie that binds me to existence, and now I break it. It gives me no pain to leave you; nor can our separation give you much. You never regarded me as one of this world, but rather as a being, who for some penance was sent from the Kingdom of Shadows; and she passed a few days weeping on the earth and longing to return to her native soil. You will weep but they will be tears of gentleness. I would, if I thought that it would lessen your regret, tell you to smile and congratulate me on my departure from the misery you beheld me endure. I would say; Woodville, rejoice with your friend, I triumph now and am most happy. But I check these expressions; these may not be the consolations of the living; they weep for their own misery, and not for that of the being they have lost. No; shed a few natural tears due to my memory: and if you ever visit my grave, pluck from thence a flower, and lay it to your heart; for your heart is the only tomb in which my memory will be interred.
My death is rapidly approaching and you are not near to watch the flitting and vanishing of my spirit. Do not regret this; for death is a too terrible object for the living. It is one of those adversities which hurt instead of purifying the heart; f-or it is so intense a misery that it hardens and dulls the feelings. Dreadful as the time was when I pursued my father towards the ocean, and found there only his lifeless corpse; yet for my own sake I should prefer that to the watching one by one his senses fade; his pulse weaken—and sleeplessly as it were devour his life in gazing. To see life in his limbs and to know that soon life would no longer be there; to see the warm breath issue from his lips and to know they would soon be chill—I will not continue to trace this frightful picture; you suffered this torture once; I never did. And the remembrance fills your heart sometimes with bitter despair when otherwise your feelings would have melted into soft sorrow.
So day by day I become weaker, and life flickers in my wasting form, as a lamp about to lose its vivifying oil. I now behold the glad sun of May. It was May, four years ago, that I first saw my beloved father; it was in May, three years ago that my folly destroyed the only being I was doomed to love. May is returned, and I die. Three days ago, the anniversary of our meeting; and, alas! of our eternal separation, after a day of killing emotion, I caused myself to be led once more to behold the face of nature. I caused myself to be carried to some meadows some miles distant from my cottage; the grass was being mowed, and there was the scent of hay in the fields; all the earth looked fresh and its inhabitants happy. Evening approached and I beheld the sun set. Three years ago and on that day and hour it shone through the branches and leaves of the beech wood and its beams flickered upon the countenance of him whom I then beheld for the last time. I now saw that divine orb, gilding all the clouds with unwonted splendour, sink behind the horizon; it disappeared from a world where he whom I would seek exists not; it approached a world where he exists not. Why do I weep so bitterly? Why does my heart heave with vain endeavour to cast aside the bitter anguish that covers it “as the waters cover the sea.” I go from this world where he is no longer and soon I shall meet him in another.
Farewell, Woodville, the turf will soon be green on my grave; and the violets will bloom on it. There is my hope and my expectation; yours are in this world; may they be fulfilled.
OTHER TITLES IN THE ART OF THE NOVELLA SERIES
BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER
HERMAN MELVILLE
THE LESSON OF THE MASTER
HENRY JAMES
MY LIFE
ANTON CHEKHOV
THE DEVIL
LEO TOLSTOY
THE TOUCHSTONE
EDITH WHARTON
THE HOUND OF THE
BASKERVILLES
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
THE DEAD
JAMES JOYCE
FIRST LOVE
IVAN TURGENEV
A SIMPLE HEART
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING
RUDYARD KIPLING
MICHAEL KOHLHAAS
HEINRICH VON KLEIST
THE BEACH OF FALESÁ
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
THE HORLA
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
THE ETERNAL HUSBAND
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
THE MAN THAT CORRUPTED
HADLEYBURG
MARK TWAIN
THE LIFTED VEIL
GEORGE ELIOT
THE GIRL WITH THE
GOLDEN EYES
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
A SLEEP AND A FORGETTING
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
BENITO CERENO
HERMAN MELVILLE
MATHILDA
MARY SHELLEY
STEMPENYU: A JEWISH ROMANCE
SHOLEM ALEICHEM
FREYA OF THE SEVEN ISLES
JOSEPH CONRAD
HOW THE TWO IVANS
QUARRELLED
MAY DAY
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
RASSELAS, PRINCE ABYSSINIA
SAMUEL JOHNSON
THE DIALOGUE OF THE DOGS
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
THE LEMOINE AFFAIR
MARCEL PROUST
THE COXON FUND
HENRY JAMES
THE DEATH OF IVAN ILYICH
LEO TOLSTOY
TALES OF BELKIN
ALEXANDER PUSHKIN
THE AWAKENING
KATE CHOPIN
ADOLPHE
BENJAMIN CONSTANT
THE COUNTRY OF
THE POINTED FIRS
SARAH ORNE JEWETT
PARNASSUS ON WHEELS
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
THE NICE OLD MAN
AND THE PRETTY GIRL
ITALO SVEVO
LADY SUSAN
JANE AUSTEN
JACOB’S ROOM
VIRGINIA WOOLF
THE DUEL
GIACOMO CASANOVA
THE DUEL
ANTON CHEKHOV
THE DUEL
JOSEPH CONRAD
THE DUEL
HEINRICH VON KLEIST
THE DUEL
ALEXANDER KUPRIN
THE ALIENIST
MACHADO DE ASSIS
ALEXANDER’S BRIDGE
WILLA CATHER
FANFARLO
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
THE DISTRACTED PREACHER
THOMAS HARDY
THE ENCHANTED WANDERER
NIKOLAI LESKOV