rom the suburbs of
the city when I came.... They are going a long way around....

THE OLD MAN.

They will come in spite of all; I see them too.... They are on the
march across the meadow lands.... They seem so small you hardly make
them out among the grasses.... They look like children playing in
the moonlight; and if the girls should see them, they would not
understand.... In vain they turn their backs; those yonder draw near
with every step they take, and the sorrow has been growing these two
hours already. They cannot hinder it from growing; and they that bear
it there no longer can arrest it.... It is their master too, and they
must serve it.... It has its end and follows its own road.... It
is unwearying and has but one idea.... Needs must they lend their
strength. They are sad, but they come.... They have pity, but they
must go forward....

MARY.

The elder smiles no longer, grandfather....

THE STRANGER.

They leave the windows....

MARY.

They kiss their mother....

THE STRANGER.

The elder has caressed the curls of the child without waking him....

MARY.

Oh! the father wants to be kissed too....

THE STRANGER.

And now silence....

MARY.

They come back beside the mother....

THE STRANGER.

And the father follows the great pendulum of the clock with his
eyes....

MARY.

You would say they were praying without knowing what they did....

THE STRANGER.

You would say that they were listening to their souls....
[_A silence._

MARY.

Grandfather, don't tell them to-night!...

THE OLD MAN.

You see, you too lose courage.... I knew well that we must not look. I
am nearly eighty-three years old, and this is the first time the sight
of life has struck me. I do not know why everything they do seems so
strange and grave to me.... They wait for night quite simply, under
their lamp, as we might have been waiting under ours; and yet I seem
to see them from the height of another world, because I know a little
truth which they do not know yet.... Is it that, my children? Tell me,
then, why you are pale, too? Is there something else, perhaps,
that cannot be told and causes us to weep? I did not know there was
anything so sad in life, nor that it frightened those who looked upon
it.... And nothing can have occurred that I should be afraid to see
them so at peace.... They have too much confidence in this world....
There they ar