"Ninety-four, and growing quicker!" he exclaimed, turning toward me with a frightened look.
"It won't increase much," my uncle whispered, feebly, but with a cool and professional air. "It will go down soon, and then death will follow."
"Be calm, Rayel," he continued, almost sternly, as his son began weeping. "Be calm, I say! That music! do you hear it, child? Do you see what is passing now? Tell it. Let me hear you."
"I cannot hear it," said Rayel, looking earnestly into his father's face.
"Hallucination!" he whispered, groping about until his hand rested on the head of his son, who was kneeling beside him. "I seem to see millions of forms around me. I seem to hear them, but I cannot see you--nor hear you."
As if exhausted by the effort, his head fell back upon Rayel's shoulder, and he lay for a time, his eyes closed, struggling for breath. The dying man's faculties would no longer obey the whip of his mighty will. Indeed, they had done him their final service, for in a few moments he was dead. Tenderly and manfully, uttering no sound of grief, Rayel lifted the lifeless body of his father, and bore it into the house.