Explore "Beside a Dead Man" by Guy de Maupassant on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
He was dying rapidly, as people die who have tuberculosis. Every day I saw him sit down, at about two o'clock, under the hotel windows, facing the calm sea, on a bench on the terrace. For some time he would remain motionless in the warmth of the sun, gazing at the Mediterranean with mournful eyes. Sometimes he would glance towards the lofty mountain, with its misty heights, that encloses Mentone; then, with a very deliberate movement, he would cross his long legs, so thin that they looked like two bones, about which the cloth of his trousers flapped loosely, and he would open a book, always the same one.
Then he would stir no more, but would read, read with all his eyes and mind; the whole of his poor expiring body looked to be reading; his whole soul would bury itself in the book, losing itself and disappearing in it, until the hour when the cooler air made him cough a little. Then he would rise and go indoors.