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I tossed and tried to get up once, only to feel terribly sick, sick unto voreat relief I realized they had laid me back down

"Hold on toelse, hot like Hell, I thought, but I was too sick to think of Hell, too sick to think of anything but vo to somewhere cool Oh, just open the s, open them on the winter; I don't care, open them!

It see reater i troubled me as to my soul or any world to come

Then abruptly all things changed

I felt myself rise upwards, as if soht to pullof the room Indeed, I looked down, and toon the bed I saw myself as if there were no baldaquin above my body to block the view

I looked far ined myself to be Understand, it was utterly dispassionate I did not feel an exultation inboy How gifted he has been by God Look at his long delicate hands, how they lie beside him, and look at the deep russet of his hair And that was me all the time, and I didn't know it or think of it, or think what effect it had on those who saw h life I didn't believe their blandishments I had only scorn for their passion Indeed, even the Master had see me But I understood nohy people had so on the bed, the boy as the cause of weeping all around in this large chamber, the boy seemed the very embodie of life

What did not make sense to me was the commotion in the room

Why did everyone weep? I saw a priest in the doorway, a priest I knew froued with him and feared to let him near me as I lay on the bed, lest I be afraid It all see his hands Bianca should not work so hard, with her damp cloth and her soft but obviously desperate words

Oh, poor child, I thought You ht have had a little more compassion for everyone if you had kno beautiful you were, and you er andfor yourself As it was, you played sly games on those around you, because you did not have faith in your own self or even knohat you were

It see this place! The sa body that lay on the bed was pulling me upwards into a tunnel of fierce, noisy wind

The wind swirled around htly in this tunnel, yet I could see in it other beings who looked on even as they were caught in it andon her and higher through this tunnel I didn't feel fear, but I felt a fatality I could not help myself

That was your error when you were that boy down there, I foundBut this is indeed hopeless And just as I concluded, so I came to the end of this tunnel; it dissolved I stood on the shore of that lovely sparkling sea

I wasn't wet from the waves, but I knew them, and I said out loud, "Oh, I'm here, I've colass "

As I looked up, I saw that the city was far away, over a series of deep green hills, and that a path led to it, and that flowers blooeously on either side of the path I had never seen such flowers, never seen such shapes and petal formations, and never never beheld such colors in all my life There were no names in the artistic canon for these colors I couldn't call them by the feeak inadequate labels which I knew

Oh, would the painters of Venice ever be astonished at these colors, I thought, and to think how they would transfors if only they could be discovered in so to do No lory that could be accomplished by color was here in this world revealed I saw it in the flowers; I saw it in the variegated grass I saw it in the boundless sky that rose up and overcity, and it too flashed and gloith this great har as if the towers of this city were y rather than a dead or earthly matter or mass