“Is it over?”

She answered: 

“Not yet; he’s still gurglin’.”

They went to look at him.  The old man was in exactly the same condition.  His hoarse rattle, as regular as the ticking of a clock, was neither quicker nor slower.  It returned every second, the tone varying a little, according as the air entered or left his chest.

His son-in-law looked at him and then said: 

“He’ll pass away without our noticin’ it, just like a candle.”

They returned to the kitchen and started to eat without saying a word.  When they had swallowed their soup, they ate another piece of bread and butter.  Then, as soon as the dishes were washed, they returned to the dying man.

The woman, carrying a little lamp with a smoky wick, held it in front of her father’s face.  If he had not been breathing, one would certainly have thought him dead.

The couple’s bed was hidden in a little recess at the other end of the room.  Silently they retired, put out the light, closed their eyes, and soon two unequal snores, one deep and the other shriller, accompanied the uninterrupted rattle of the dying man.

The rats ran about in the garret.

The husband awoke at the first streaks of dawn.  His father-in-law was still alive.  He shook his wife, worried by the tenacity of the old man.

“Say, Phemie, he don’t want to quit.  What would you do?”

He knew that she gave good advice.

She answered: 

“You needn’t be afraid; he can’t live through the day.  And the mayor won’t stop our burying him to-morrow, because he allowed it for Maitre Renard’s father, who died just during the planting season.”

He was convinced by this argument, and left for the fields.

His wife baked the dumplings and then attended to her housework.

At noon the old man was not dead.  The people hired for the day’s work came by groups to look at him.  Each one had his say.  Then they left again for the fields.

At six o’clock, when the work was over, the father was still breathing.  At last his son-in-law was frightened.

“What would you do now, Phemie?”

She no longer knew how to solve the problem.  They went to the mayor.  He promised that he would close his eyes and authorize the funeral for the following day.  They also went to the health officer, who likewise promised, in order to oblige Maitre Chicot, to antedate the death certificate.  The man and the woman returned, feeling more at ease.

They went to bed and to sleep, just as they did the preceding day, their sonorous breathing blending with the feeble breathing of the old man.

When they awoke, he was not yet dead.

Then they began to be frightened.  They stood by their father, watching him with distrust, as though he had wished to play them a mean trick, to deceive them, to annoy them on purpose, and they were vexed at him for the time which he was making them lose.