e scaled the cemetery wall and stealthily stretched
themselves on the ground, so that they looked not unlike the far-flung
shadows of the cemetery's crosses, a file of dark, tattered figures of
beggars, while on the further side of the slowly darkening greenery a
cantor drawled in sluggish, careless accents:

"E-e-ternal me-e--"

"Eternal memory of what?" exclaimed Lieutenant Khorvat with an angry
shrug of his shoulders. "Suppose, in his day, a man has been the best
cucumber-salter or mushroom-pickler in a given town. Or suppose he has
been the best cobbler there, or that once he said something which the
street wherein he dwelt can still remember. Would not THAT man be a man
whose record should be preserved, and made accessible to my
recollection?"

And again the Lieutenant's face wreathed itself in solid rings of
pungent tobacco smoke.

Blowing softly for a moment, the wind bent the long stems of grass in
the direction of the declining sun, and died away. All that remained
audible amid the stillness was the peevish voices of women saying:

"To the left, I say."

"Oh, what is to be done, Tanechka?"

Expelling a fresh cloud of tobacco smoke in cylindrical form, the old
man muttered:

"It would seem that those women have forgotten the precise spot where
their relative or friend happens to lie buried."

As a hawk flew over the sun-reddened belfry-cross, the bird's shadow
glided over a memorial stone near the spot where we were sitting,
glanced off the corner of the stone, and appeared anew beyond it. And
in the watching of this shadow, I somehow found a pleasant diversion.

Went on the Lieutenant:

"I say that a graveyard ought to evince the victory of life, the
triumph of intellect and of labour, rather than the power of death.
However, imagine how things would work out under my scheme. Under it
the record of which I have spoken would constitute a history of a
town's life which, if anything, would increase men's respect for their
fellows. Yes, such a history as THAT is what a cemetery ought to be.
Otherwise the place is useless. Similarly will the past prove useless
if it can give us nothing. Yet is such a history ever compiled? If it
is, how can one say that events are brought about by, forsooth,
'servants of God'?"

Pointing to the tombs with a gesture as though he were swimming, he
paused for a moment or two.

"You are a good man," I said, "and a man who must have lived a good and
interesting life."