What drove his soul? Surely it was struggling with an unseen
power. And the steady diminuendo of his bodily forces continued, until
he was a corpse in which a fury dwelt. That fury was the soul. He had a
strange fancy that he, unlike all the rest of humanity, would die, yet
still retain his spirit in its fleshy prison, and that the spirit
screamed and fought to be free on its wayward pilgrimage to heaven or
hell. All its brother and sister spirits had fled, since the beginnings
of time, from their bodies at the crisis of dissolution, had gone to
punishment or to reward. His soul alone was to meet a different fate,
was to be confined in a decaying body, to breathe physical corruption,
and to be at home in a crumbling dwelling to which no light, no air,
could ever penetrate. And the soul, which knows instinctively its eternal
_m?tier_, rebelled with a fantastic violence. And still, ever, the body
died. The pulses ceased from beating. The warm blood was mixed with snow
until it grew cold and gradually congealed in the veins. The little door
of the heart swung slower and slower upon its hinges, more feebly--more
feebly. And then there came a supreme moment. The soul of Valentine, with
a frantic vehemence, beat down at last its prison door, and, even as his
body died, escaped with a cry through the air.
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