What comparision does Death make to Liesel reading in the mayor's library and Max living in the basement?

This is when Liezel is reading excerpts from "The Whistler" in the Mayor's library. She felt cold reading it, "Every time she picked up or delivered from the Mayor's house, she read three pages and shivered, but she could not last forever..." Similarly Max could not "withstand the basement much longer." Like Liezel he felt the cold; he felt the coldness of the damp basement and the coldness of the isolation. Take a look at the chapter "The Swapping of Nightmares", the comparison I made right there on pg 213 (my copy).