The bright winter sun shed its light on a room flooded with a light haze. Behind the white curtains lay a little dead woman. She was dressed in black, her feet outstretched and close together, her head resting on the pillows. She looked like a child, smaller than in life. Her face was of leaden hue. The hair was unruffled, the mouth open as if in the effort to breathe, the lips violet, the chest slightly elevated, and the rest of the body sunken in the bed. The glazed eyes of the little dead woman were wide open, as if in stupefaction at an incredible spectacle; and round the violet fingers of the leaden-hued hands there was twisted part of a broken rosary of lapis-lazuli.