e set my scene, and I begin. It is in the plains of
Normandy; of countless millions only two friends remain. One of them
is dying. As the stars recede he stretches his hand to his companion,
breathes once more, looking him in the face, joyous in the attainment
of final rest. A hole is scraped, and the last burial is achieved.
Then the man, a young beautiful man with the pallor of long vigils
and spiritual combat upon his face, arises.

"The scene echoes strangely the asceticism that produced it.
Rose-garden and vineyard are gone; there are no fields, nor
hedgerows, nor gables seen picturesquely on a sky, human with smoke
mildly ascending. A broken wall that a great elm tears and rends,
startles the silence; apple-orchards spread no flowery snow, and the
familiar thrushes have deserted the moss-grown trees, in other times
their trees; and the virgin forest ceases only to make bleak place
for marish plains with lonely pools and stagnating streams, where
perchance a heron rises on blue and heavy wings.

"All the beautiful colours the world had worn when she was man's
mistress are gone, and now, as if mourning for her lover and lord,
she is clad only in sombre raiment. Since her lord departed she bears
but scanty fruit, and since her lover left her, she that was glad has
grown morose; her joy seems to have died with his; and the feeling of
gloom is heightened, when at the sound of the man's footsteps a pack
of wild dogs escape from a ruin, where they have been sleeping, and
wake the forest with lugubrious yelps and barks. About the dismantled
porches no single rose--the survival of roses planted by some fair
woman's hand--remains to tell that man was once there--worked there
for his daily bread, seeking a goodness and truth in life which was
not his lot to attain.

"There are few open spaces, and the man has to follow the tracks of
animals. Sometimes he comes upon a herd of horses feeding in a glade;
they turn and look upon him in a round-eyed surprise, and he sees
them galloping on the hill-sides, their manes and tails floating in
the wind.

"Paris is covered with brushwood, and trees and wood from the shore
have torn away the bridges, of which only a few fragments remain. Dim
and desolate are those marshes now in the twilight shedding.

"The river swirls through multitudinous ruins, lighted by a crescent
moon; clouds hurry and gather and bear away the day. The man stands
like a saint of old, who, on the last verge o