Let us raise the
lid."
"Pardon me, Monsieur," said the Count, peremptorily, advancing to the
side of the coffin and extending his arm across it, "I cannot permit
that indignity--that desecration."
"There shall be none, sir--simply the raising of the lid; you shall
remain in the room. If it should prove as we all hope, you shall have
the pleasure of one other look, really the last, upon your beloved
kinsman."
"But, sir, I can't."
"But, Monsieur, I must."
"But, besides, the thing, the turnscrew, broke when the last screw was
turned; and I give you my sacred honor there is nothing but the body in
this coffin."
"Of course, Monsieur le Comte believes all that; but he does not know so
well as I the legerdemain in use among servants, who are accustomed to
smuggling. Here, Philippe, you must take off the lid of that coffin."
The Count protested; but Philippe--a man with a bald head and a smirched
face, looking like a working blacksmith--placed on the floor a leather
bag of tools, from which, having looked at the coffin, and picked with
his nail at the screw-heads, he selected a turnscrew and, with a few
deft twirls at each of the screws, they stood up like little rows of
mushrooms, and the lid was raised. I saw the light, of which I thought I
had seen my last, once more; but the axis of vision remained fixed.
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