they left the table the Countess, who on the preceding day had for
the first time omitted her daily visit to the cemetery, proposed that
they should go there together; so all three set out for the village.

They were obliged to go through some woods, through which ran a stream
called "La Rainette," no doubt because of the frogs that peopled it;
then they had to cross the end of a plain before arriving at the church,
situated in the midst of a group of houses that sheltered the grocer,
the baker, the butcher, the wine-merchant, and several other modest
tradesmen who supplied the needs of the peasants.

The walk was made in thoughtful silence, the recollection of the dead
weighing on their spirits. Arrived at the grave, the women knelt and
prayed a long time. The Countess, motionless, bent low, her handkerchief
at her eyes, for she feared to weep lest her tears run down her cheeks.
She prayed, but not as she had prayed before this day, in a sort of
invocation to her mother, a despairing appeal penetrating under the
marble of the tomb until she seemed to feel by the poignancy of her
own anguish that the dead must hear her, listen to her, but a simple,
hesitating, and earnest utterance of the consecrated words of the _Pater
Noster_ and the _Ave Maria_. She would not have had that day sufficient
strength and steadiness of nerve necessary for that cruel communion that
brought no response with what remained of that being who had disappeared
in the tomb where all that was left of her was concealed. Other
anxieties had penetrated her woman's heart, had agitated, wounded, and
distracted her; and her fervent prayer rose to Heaven, full of vague
supplications. She offered her adoration to God, the inexorable God who
has made all poor creatures on the earth, and begged Him to take pity on
her as well as on the one He had recalled to Himself.

She could not have told what she had asked of God, so vague and
confused were her fears still; but she felt the need of Divine aid, of a
superhuman support against approaching dangers and inevitable sorrows.

Annette, with closed eyes, having also murmured the formulas, sank into
a reverie, for she did not wish to rise before her mother.

Olivier Bertin looked at them, thinking that he never had seen a
more ravishing picture, and somewhat regretful that it was out of the
question for him to be permitted to make a sketch of the scene.

On their way back they talked of human life, softly sti