features, those eyes, those curls – in the narrow box, in the damp underground darkness – lying here, not far from me – while I was still alive, and, maybe, a few paces from my father� . I thought all this; I strained my imagination, and yet all the while the lines:

‘From lips indifferent of her death I heard, Indifferently I listened to it, too,’

were echoing in my heart. O youth, youth! little dost thou care for anything; thou art master, as it were, of all the treasures of the universe – even sorrow gives thee pleasure, even grief thou canst turn to thy profit; thou art self-confident and insolent; thou sayest, ‘I alone am living – look you!’ – but thy days fly by all the while, and vanish without trace or reckoning; and