“That’s not a bad summing-up of it all,” I said.  “And the end....  How would you like that to come?”

“How would I like that to come?” He repeated my question lightly yet meditatively too.  Then he was silent for some thirty seconds before he snapped his fingers—­the action again before the words.

“Like that!”

I thought of the definition of inspiration—­“A calculation rapidly made.”  Perhaps he had never thought of the manner of his death before.  Now he had an inspiration as to how it would come.

We were silent a long time, I thinking how like some splendid Doge of Venice he looked, sitting up in bed, his beautiful mobile hand stroking his chin.

I agreed, when I could speak, that to be snuffed out like a candle would save a lot of trouble.

After Henry Irving’s sudden death in October of the same year, some of his friends protested against the statement that it was the kind of death that he desired—­that they knew, on the contrary, that he thought sudden death inexpressibly sad.

I can only say what he told me.

I stayed with him about three hours at Wolverhampton.  Before I left I went back to see the doctor again—­a very nice man by the way, and clever.

He told me that Henry ought never to play “The Bells” again, even if he acted again, which he said ought not to be.

It was clever of the doctor to see what a terrible emotional strain “The Bells” put upon Henry—­how he never could play the part of Matthias with ease as he could Louis XI., for example.

Every time he heard the sound of the bells, the throbbing of his heart must have nearly killed him.  He used always to turn quite white—­there was no trick about it.  It was imagination acting physically on the body.

His death as Matthias—­the death of a strong, robust man—­was different from all his other stage deaths.  He did really almost die—­he imagined death with such horrible intensity.  His eyes would disappear upwards, his face grow gray, his limbs cold.

No wonder, then, that the first time that the Wolverhampton doctor’s warning was disregarded, and Henry played “The Bells” at Bradford, his heart could not stand the strain.  Within twenty-four hours of his last death as Matthias, he was dead.

What a heroic thing was that last performance of Becket which came between!  I am told by those who were in the company at the time that he was obviously suffering and dazed, this last night of life.  But he went through it all as usual.  The courteous little speech to the audience, the signing of a worrying boy’s drawing at the stage-door—­all that he had done for years, he did faithfully for the last time.

Yes, I know it seems sad to the ordinary mind that he should have died in the entrance to an hotel in a country-town with no friend, no relation near him.  Only his faithful and devoted servant Walter Collinson (whom, as was not his usual custom, he had asked to drive back to the hotel with him that night) was there.  Do I not feel the tragedy of the beautiful body, for so many years the house of a thousand souls, being laid out in death by hands faithful and devoted enough, but not the hands of his kindred either in blood or in sympathy!