time buried in her easy-chair, reviewing the past and living it over
again. She would sit in the same position for days, her eyes wide open
and dreaming, her thoughts far from herself, far from the room in which
she sat, journeying whither her memories led her, to distant faces,
dearly loved, pallid faces, to vanished regions--lost in a profound
lethargy which Germinie was careful not to disturb, saying to herself:
"Madame is in her meditations----"

One day in every week, however, she went abroad. Indeed it was with that
weekly excursion in view, in order to be nearer the spot to which she
wished to go on that one day, that she left her apartments on Rue
Taitbout and took up her abode on Rue de Laval. One day in every week,
deterred by nothing, not even by illness, she repaired to the Montmartre
Cemetery, where her father and her brother rested, and the women whose
loss she regretted, all those whose sufferings had come to an end before
hers. For the dead and for Death she displayed a veneration almost equal
to that of the ancients. To her, the grave was sacred, and a dear
friend. She loved to visit the land of hope and deliverance where her
dear ones were sleeping, there to await death and to be ready with her
body. On that day, she would start early in the morning, leaning on the
arm of her maid, who carried a folding-stool. As she drew near the
cemetery, she would enter the shop of a dealer in wreaths, who had known
her for many years, and who, in winter, loaned her a foot-warmer. There
she would rest a few moments; then, loading Germinie down with wreaths
of immortelles, she would pass through the cemetery gate, take the path
to the left of the cedar at the entrance, and make her pilgrimage slowly
from tomb to tomb. She would throw away the withered flowers, sweep up
the dead leaves, tie the wreaths together, and, sitting down upon her
folding-chair, would gaze and dream, and absent-mindedly remove a bit of
moss from the flat stone with the end of her umbrella. Then she would
rise, turn as if to say _au revoir_ to the tomb she was leaving, walk
away, stop once more, and talk in an undertone, as she had done before,
with that part of her that was sleeping under the stone; and having thus
paid a visit to all the dead who lived in her affections, she would
return home slowly and reverentially, enveloping herself in silence as
if she were afraid to speak.

III

In the course of her reverie, Mademoiselle de V