"It is scandalous.

Why do you rebel like this against the goodness of God who occasionally shows His compassion for our sufferings by alleviating them?
I tell you again that you yourself ought to fall on your knees and beg Him to restore to you the use of your leg and let you live another ten years." The Commander almost choked with anger.

"What!" he replied, "ask to live for another ten years, when my finest day will be the day I die! Show myself as spiritless, as cowardly as the thousands of patients whom I see pass along here, full of a base terror of death, shrieking aloud their weakness, their passion to remain alive! Ah! no, I should feel too much contempt for myself.

I want to die!--to die at once! It will be so delightful to be no more." He was at last out of the scramble of the pilgrims, and again found himself near Doctor Chassaigne and Pierre on the bank of the Gave.

And he addressed himself to the doctor, whom he often met: "Didn't they try to restore a dead man to life just now ?" he asked; "I was told of it--it almost suffocated me.