Little Poems in Prose

his neck I must needs seek out the cord be- tween the two ridges of the cut. I forgot to tell you that I had called loudly for help, but all my neighbours had refused to come; faithful so far to the customs of civilized man, who is never willing, I know not why, to mix himself up in the business of a suicide. At last a doctor turned dup who said that the child had been dead for several hours. When later on we had to unclothe him for burial the de- gree of rigor mortis was such that, despairing of bending the limbs, we were obliged to tear and cut the clothes to take them off him. The Commissary of Police, to whom natu- rally I had to report the incident, looked at me asquint, and said, “This matter needs clearing up,” moved doubtless by an inveterate desire and professional habit to frighten at any cost the innocent as the guilty. There remained one supreme task to ac- complish, whose mere thought caused me dreadful anguish; I must inform his parents. My feet refused to take to their door. At last I summoned up sufficient courage, but, to my great astonishment, the mother showed no emotion; not one tear oozed from the corner of her eye. I attributed this strangeness to the horror itself which she must be suffering; and I remembered the well-known apophthegm,