"It is winter," he said, "and a dark night; and we have nothing fresher. But go and get some sleep, Herr Professor. I will put his bed in order with my spade. And though he was only an animal, perhaps after all we shall see him again at the resurrection; and if there should be a heaven for dogs, Herr Professor, he will go there sooner than many a priest. And why? Because he knew what friendship and kindness meant; and that is what nine men out of ten don't know; and he never treated a poor fellow-man like a dog, which can't be said of everybody. I don't think the good God will object if I offer up a few paternosters for the poor dog's soul."
Jansen nodded in silence, and turned away. Then he went into the house, and stepped into his studio. It was cold as ice in the large room; the wind roared down the chimney, and rattled in the iron stove. Yet for all that the unhappy man could not make up his mind to go back to his lodgings. He threw himself upon the low sofa and spread his cloak over his benumbed limbs. So he lay there perfectly still, and listened to the falling of the rain and the noise made by the spade. His eyes were shut. But for all that he never ceased to see, in the darkness of his own heart, a pale face, only too well known, from which the mask had just fallen, and which, despite its frightened, supplicating look, stared up at him like the head of Medusa.
When he started up, late in the morning, after a short sleep, and saw the snow drifting sadly down outside the window, the face at once rose up before him again; and the frightened look of those blue eyes, that he had hoped never to see more, and that now came to begin anew their designs upon his happiness, made him shudder even more than the harsh breath of the winter morning. And yet at first he had difficulty in believing that it had really happened. It was only from his great exhaustion that he realized what a storm he had passed through.
He was surprised himself at the stolid, torpid, icy calmness with which he was able to look back on the frightful scene, as if the apparition of the night, that yesterday made his hair stand on end, had no power over him in broad daylight. He thought about the loss of his faithful old companion too, as something that had happened long ago. But he was pained by the thought that he had let the faithful animal be buried in his masquerade trappings, with the gaudy ribbons and the guitar on his back. He even went so far as to seriously deliberate whether he should not have the grave opened again and cleared of all the tawdry finery. However, he put it off until evening; and when evening came he had much more pressing matters to attend to.