after heavy rains. Above that wintry beam the wings of an
invisible windmill turned and turned,--slow-moving wings, unvarying in
their movement, which seemed to be turning for eternity.

In front of the wall, against which was planted a thicket of dead
cypresses, turned red by the frost, was a vast tract of land upon which
were two rows of crowded, jostling overturned crosses, like two great
funeral processions. The crosses touched and pushed one another and trod
on one another's heels. They bent and fell and collapsed in the ranks.
In the middle there was a sort of congestion which had caused them to
bulge out on both sides; you could see them lying--covered by the snow
and raising it into mounds with the thick wood of which they were
made--upon the paths, somewhat trampled in the centre, that skirted the
two long files. The broken ranks undulated with the fluctuation of a
multitude, the disorder and wavering course of a long march. The black
crosses with their arms outstretched assumed the appearance of ghosts
and persons in distress. The two disorderly columns made one think of a
human panic, a desperate, frightened army. It was as if one were looking
on at a terrible rout.

All the crosses were laden with wreaths, wreaths of immortelles, wreaths
of white paper with silver thread, black wreaths with gold thread; but
you could see them beneath the snow, worn out, withered, ghastly things,
souvenirs, as it were, which the other dead would not accept and which
had been picked up in order to make a little toilet for the crosses with
gleanings from the graves.

All the crosses had a name written in white; but there were other names
that were not even written on a piece of wood,--a broken branch of a
tree, stuck in the ground, with an envelope tied around it--such
tombstones as that were to be seen there!

On the left, where they were digging a trench for a third row of
crosses, the workman's shovel threw black dirt into the air, which fell
upon the white earth around. Profound silence, the deaf silence of the
snow, enveloped everything, and but two sounds could be heard; the dull
sound made by the clods of earth and the heavy sound of regular
footsteps; an old priest who was waiting there, his head enveloped in a
black cowl, dressed in a black gown and stole, and with a dirty, yellow
surplice, was trying to keep himself warm by stamping his great galoches
on the pavement of the high road, in front of the crosses.

Su