up on the sea in the
distance the dancing crest of the waves.

The breeze from the ocean blew in gusts, increasing the heat of the flame
which flattened down, twisted, then shot up again, throwing out millions
of sparks. They mounted with wild rapidity along the cliff and were lost
in the sky, mingling with the stars, increasing their number. Some sea
birds who had awakened uttered their plaintive cry, and, describing long
curves, flew, with their white wings extended, through the gleam from the
funeral pyre and then disappeared in the night.

Before long the pile of wood was nothing but a mass of flame, not red but
yellow, a blinding yellow, a furnace lashed by the wind. And, suddenly,
beneath a stronger gust, it tottered, partially crumbling as it leaned
towards the sea, and the corpse came to view, full length, blackened on
his couch of flame and burning with long blue flames:

The pile of wood having crumbled further on the right the corpse turned
over as a man does in bed. They immediately covered him with fresh wood
and the fire started up again more furiously than ever.

The East Indians, seated in a semi-circle on the shingle, looked out with
sad, serious faces. And the rest of us, as it was very cold, had drawn
nearer to the fire until the smoke and sparks came in our faces. There
was no odor save that of burning pine and petroleum.

Hours passed; day began to break. Toward five o'clock in the morning
nothing remained but a heap of ashes. The relations gathered them up,
cast some of them to the winds, some in the sea, and kept some in a brass
vase that they had brought from India. They then retired to their home to
give utterance to lamentations.

These young princes and their servants, by the employment of the most
inadequate appliances succeeded in carrying out the cremation of their
relation in the most perfect manner, with singular skill and remarkable
dignity. Everything was done according to ritual, according to the rigid
ordinances of their religion. Their dead one rests in peace.

The following morning at daybreak there was an indescribable commotion in
Etretat. Some insisted that they had burned a man alive, others that they
were trying to hide a crime, some that the mayor would be put in jail,
others that the Indian prince had succumbed to an attack of cholera.

The men were amazed, the women indignant. A crowd of people spent the day
on the site of the funeral pile, looking for fragments of b