"And . . . and is he dying?"
"He's dead. He died this morning."
"He's dead?"
"Yes, Daddy, he's dead."
"Did you . . . did you speak to him?"
"Yes . . . I spoke to him. He was very clear in his head: a clear-headed old man, for all his ninety-two years. When I arrived, he pressed my hand very kindly and nicely, made me sit beside his chair. He was sitting up, in his chair. That's how he died, in his chair, passing away very peacefully. He told me that he had wanted to see me . . . because I was the son . . . of my mother. . . . He asked after Mamma and made me describe how you two had lived . . . at Brussels. I told him about my childhood. I told him of my later life. He took a strange interest in everything . . . and then . . . then he asked after you, how you had been, how you were . . . asked if I was attached to my parents . . . asked after my prospects . . . asked after my aims in life. . . . I was afraid of tiring him and tried to get up, but he put out his hand and made me sit down again: 'Go on, go on telling me things,' he said. I told him about the Hague, told him how we were now living at Driebergen. He knew that Uncle Gerrit's children were here. He seemed to have heard about us. . . . When I went away, he said, 'Doctor, may the old man give you something?' And he handed me three thousand guilders: 'You must have patients, Doctor, who can't afford things,' he said. 'You won't refuse it, will you?' I thought it right to accept the money. It was an obvious pleasure to him to give it me. . . . Next day—that was this morning, when I went again—he was much less lucid. He just mentioned Mamma; and, when he spoke of her, I could see that he imagined that she
