a young girl's;
and then, wrapped in tissue paper, like a relic, a portrait of myself
when a child. Last, a written page, torn from one of my old school
copy-books, which she had not been able to throw wholly away.
Transparent at the folds, the worn sheet was fragile as lace, and gave
the illusion of being equally precious. That was all the treasure my
aunt had collected. That jewel box held the poverty of her life and
the wealth of her heart.

* * * * * *

It poured with rain on the day of the funeral. All the morning groups
of people succeeded each other in the big cavern of our room, a going
and coming of sighs. My aunt was laid in her coffin towards two
o'clock, and it was carried then into the passage, where visitors' feet
had brought dirt and puddles. A belated wreath was awaited, and then
the umbrellas opened, and under their black undulation the procession
moved off.

When we came out of the church it was not far off four o'clock. The
rain had not stopped and little rivers dashed down from either side of
the procession's sluggish flow along the street. There were many
flowers, so that the hearse made a blot of relief, beautiful enough.
There were many people, too, and I turned round several times. Always
I saw old Eudo, in his black cowl, hopping along in the mud,
hunchbacked as a crow. Marie was walking among some women in the
second half of the file, whose frail and streaming roof the hearse drew
along irregularly with jerks and halts. Her gait was jaded; she was
thinking only of our sorrow! All things darkened again to my eyes in
the ugliness of the evening.

The cemetery is full of mud under the muslin of fallen rain, and the
footfalls make a sticky sound in it. There are a few trees, naked and
paralyzed. The sky is marshy and sprinkled with crows.

The coffin, with its shapeless human form, is lowered from the hearse
and disappears in the fresh earth.

They march past. Marie and her father take their places beside me. I
say thanks to every one in the same tone; they are all like each other,
with their gestures of impotence, their dejected faces, the words they
get ready and pour out as they pass before me, and their dark costume.
No one has come from the castle, but in spite of that there are many
people and they all converge upon me. I pluck up courage.

Monsieur Lucien Gozlan comes forward, calls me "my dear sir," and
brings me the condolences o