rom them before it has
finished with them! before their bones have assumed the color and the
ancient appearance, so to speak, of stone, before the passing years have
effaced the last trace of humanity and the memory of a body! The
excavation is renewed when the earth is still themselves, when they are
the damp soil in which the mattock is buried. The earth is loaned to
them, you say? But it does not even confine the odor of death! In
summer, the wind that passes over this scarcely-covered human
charnel-house wafts the unholy miasma to the city of the living. In the
scorching days of August the keepers deny admission to the place: there
are flies that bear upon them the poison of the carrion, pestilential
flies whose sting is deadly!

* * * * *

Mademoiselle arrived at this spot after passing the wall that separates
the lots sold in perpetuity from those sold temporarily only. Following
the directions given her by a keeper, she walked along between the
further line of crosses and the newly-opened trench. And there she made
her way over buried wreaths, over the snowy pall, to a hole where the
trench began. It was covered over with old rotten planks and a sheet of
oxidized zinc on which a workman had thrown his blue blouse. The earth
sloped away behind them to the bottom of the trench, where could be seen
the sinister outlines of three wooden coffins: there were one large one
and two smaller ones just behind. The crosses of the past week, of the
day before, of two days before, extended in a line down the slope; they
glided along, plunged suddenly downward, and seemed to be taking long
strides as if they were in danger of being carried over a precipice.

Mademoiselle began to ascend the path by these crosses, spelling out the
dates and searching for the names with her wretched eyes. She reached
the crosses of the 8th of November: that was the day before her maid's
death, and Germinie should be close by. There were five crosses of the
9th of November, five crosses huddled close together: Germinie was not
in the crush. Mademoiselle de Varandeuil went a little farther on, to
the crosses of the 10th, then to those of the 11th, then to those of the
12th. She returned to the 8th, and looked carefully around in all
directions: there was nothing, absolutely nothing,--Germinie had been
buried without a cross! Not even a bit of wood had been placed in the
ground by which to identify her gra