ooked as if they had been scalded, so red were they; her
idiotic and contracted mouth, trembling with despair, and her whole
pitiful face, which was drenched with tears.

The corpse was that of her husband, who had been lost at sea; he had
been washed ashore and was now being laid to rest.

The cemetery adjoined the church. The mourners passed into it through a
side-door, while the corpse was being nailed in its coffin, in the
vestry. A fine rain moistened the atmosphere; we felt cold; the earth
was slippery and the grave-diggers who had not completed their task,
found it hard to raise the heavy soil, for it stuck to their shovels. In
the background, the women kneeling in the grass, throwing back their
hoods and their big white caps, the starched wings of which fluttered in
the wind, appeared at a distance like an immense winding-sheet hovering
over the earth.

When the corpse reappeared, the prayers began again, and the sobs broke
out anew, and could be heard through the dropping rain.

Not far from us, issued, at regular intervals, a sort of subdued gurgle
that sounded like laughter. In any other place, a person hearing it
would have thought it the repressed explosion of some overwhelming joy
or the paroxysm of a delirious happiness. It was the widow, weeping.
Then she walked to the edge of the grave, as did the rest of the
mourners, and little by little, the soil assumed its ordinary level and
everybody went home.

As we walked down the cemetery steps, a young fellow passed us and said
in French to a companion: "Heavens! didn't the fellow stink! He is
almost completely mortified! It isn't surprising, though, after being in
the water three weeks!"

* * * * *

One morning we started as on other mornings; we chose the same road, and
passed the hedge of young elms and the sloping meadow where the day
before we had seen a little girl chasing cattle to the drinking-trough;
but it was the last day, and the last time perhaps, that we should pass
that way.

A muddy stretch of land, into which we sank up to our ankles, extends
from Carnac to the village of Po. A boat was waiting for us; we entered
it, and they hoisted the sail and pushed off. Our sailor, an old man
with a cheerful face, sat aft; he fastened a line to the gunwale and let
his peaceful boat go its own way. There was hardly any wind; the blue
sea was calm and the narrow track the rudder ploughed in the waters
could be seen