Next day, by stealth again, we buried the little rose-lady, unknown to her
husband. We could not keep the fact long from the entomologist, for he was
up and about the house again. Nor was there equal need. So when the last
rites were over I told him, but without giving any part of her message--I
couldn't do it! I just said she had left us.
His eye did not moisten, but he paled, trembled, wiped his brow. Then I
handed him the crushed moth, and he was his convalescent self again.
"Hmm!--Dot iss a pity she kit smashed; I titn't vant to do dot."
I thought maybe he felt more than he showed, for he fretted to be allowed
to take a walk alone beyond the gate and the corner. With some misgivings
his wife let him go, and when she was almost anxious enough over his tardy
stay to start after him he came back looking very much better. But the
next morning, when we found him in the burning fever of an unmistakable
relapse, he confessed that the German keeper of an eating-stall in the
neighboring market, for his hunger's and the Fatherland's sake, had
treated him to his "whole pifshtea-ak undt glahss be-eh."
He lived only a few days. Through all his deliriums he hunted butterflies
and beetles, and died insensible to his wife's endearments, repeating the
Latin conjugations of his inconceivable boyhood.
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