o indicate the place
where he lay.

His relatives made a pretence 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 incessantly above the open field, and then
descending like a shower of black rain 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 covered like black patches, and in which they kept pecking
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 pondering over the fate of the beggar who was such an
outcast in life that his horrible death was a relief to all who had known
him.

INDISCRETION

They had loved each other before marriage with a pure and lofty love.
They had first met on the sea-shore. He had thought this young girl
charming, as she passed by with her light-colored parasol and her dainty
dress amid the marine landscape against the horizon. He had loved her,
blond and slender, in these surroundings of blue ocean and spacious sky.
He could not distinguish the tenderness which this budding woman awoke in
him from the vague and powerful emotion which the fresh salt air and the
grand scenery of surf and sunshine and waves aroused in his soul.

She, on the other hand, had loved him because he courted her, because he
was young, rich, kind, and attentive. She had loved him because it is
natural for young girls to love men who whisper sweet nothings to them.

So, for three months, they had lived side by side, and hand in hand. The
greeting which they exchanged in the morning before the bath, in the
freshness of the morning, or in the evening on the sand, under the stars,
in the warmth of a calm night, whispered low, very low, already had the
flavor of kisses, though their lips had never met.

Each dreamed of the other at night, each thought of the other on awaking,
and, without yet having voiced their sentiments, each longer for the