down in the middle of an open field. He did not get up again.

The white flakes which kept continually falling buried him, so that his
body, quite stiff and stark, disappeared under the incessant
accumulation of their rapidly thickening mass; and nothing any longer
indicated the place where the corpse was lying.

His relatives made pretense of inquiring about him and searching for him
for about a week. They even made a show of weeping.

The winter was severe, and the thaw did not set in quickly. Now, one
Sunday, on their way to mass, the farmers noticed a great flight of
crows, who were whirling endlessly above the open field, and then, like
a shower of black rain, descended in a heap at the same spot, ever going
and coming.

The following week these gloomy birds were still there. There was a
crowd of them up in the air, as if they had gathered from all corners of
the horizon; and they swooped down with a great cawing into the shining
snow, which they filled curiously with patches of black, and in which
they kept rummaging obstinately. A young fellow went to see what they
were doing, and discovered the body of the blind man, already half
devoured, mangled. His wan eyes had disappeared, pecked out by the long
voracious beaks.

And I can never feel the glad radiance of sunlit days without sadly
remembering and gloomily pondering over the fate of the beggar so
deprived of joy in life that his horrible death was a relief for all
those who had known him.