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Au pis aller, if the burden of life becomes utterly intolerable I can shuffle it off as quickly as did that proud Roman, who, 'when the birds began to sing' in the dawn of a day heralded by tempestuous winds laden with perfume from the vales of Sicily, shut his eyes forever from the warm sparkling Mediterranean billows that broke in the roads of Utica, and pricked the memory of inattentive Azrael with the point of a sword.
The four principal angels are Gabriel, the angel of revelation; Michael, the friend and protector of the Jews; Azrael, the angel of death; and Izrafel, whose office it will be to sound the trumpet at the last day. Every man has two guardian angels to attend him and record his actions, good and evil.
In epicurean Rome it was a marionette that invited you to wreathe yourself with roses before they could fade. In the Muslim East it was represented by Azrael, who was an angel. In Vedic India it was represented by Yama, who was a god. But mediævally in Europe the skeleton was preferred. Since then it has changed again. It is no longer a spectral vampire.
He met Comings again at five o'clock, and they strolled out Fifth Avenue together to Mrs. Patton's brown-stone palace. Thyrsis observed that his friend had been considerate enough to omit his afternoon change of costume, and for this he was grateful. Mrs. Patton was still in mourning, a filmy and diaphanous kind of mourning, beautiful enough to placate the angel Azrael himself.
For an average of three hundred and sixty-two days a year Moses was a miserable worm, a nonentity, but on the other three, when death threatened to visit Malka or her little clan, Moses became a personage of prime importance, and was summoned at all hours of the day and night to wrestle with the angel Azrael.
Though so near to his end, he preserved all the gestures of health. In his clear glance, in his firm tone, in the robust movement of his shoulders, there was something calculated to disconcert death. Azrael, the Mohammedan angel of the sepulchre, would have turned back, and thought that he had mistaken the door. G seemed to be dying because he willed it so. There was freedom in his agony.
"Allah made all men," he affirmed. "Mayhap the Franks and we be brothers. Have ye come by way of Mecca?" "Yea. And sorry brotherhood did the Mecca men offer us, O Sheik! So, too, the men of Beni Harb. Together, they slew five of us. But we be fighting-men, Bara Miyan. We took a great vengeance. All that tribe of Beni Harb we brushed with the wing of Azraël, save only the Great Apostate.
He touched the mortal hand that throbbed to meet his clasp; the last film fell from the painter's eye, and he saw, with ecstasy, no horrid phantom, but AZRAEL, the Angel of Death, great, beautiful, and good. Elias Muggs is no more! Hepzibah Muggs is a widow; a stranger has purchased the stock of West India goods, and the Bluetown Fusileers are commanded by the first lieutenant.
She bends over and kisses his cold lips; she tears her lace mantle from her shoulders, and, pressing it to his wounds, tries to stanch the life-blood welling from his side. The mantle grows scarlet with his gore, but the lips are whiter and colder with each kiss. She knows, alas! that there is one nearer to him now than she Azrael is between her and her lover.
"Man," she added passionately, before us all, for now in face of the last peril every false shame and wish to conceal the truth had left her; "man, why were you born to bring woe upon my head and joy to my heart? Well, well, the joy outweighs the woe, and even if the angel who led you hither is named Azrael, still I shall bless him who has revealed to me my soul.
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