saw the stone which I had just quitted rise upright.
Then the dead person appeared, a naked skeleton, pushing the stone back
with its bent back. I saw it quite clearly, although the night was so
dark. On the cross I could read:

"'Here lies Jacques Olivant, who died at the age of fifty-one. He loved
his family, was kind and honorable, and died in the grace of the Lord.'

"The dead man also read what was inscribed on his tombstone; then he
picked up a stone off the path, a little, pointed stone and began to
scrape the letters carefully. He slowly effaced them, and with the
hollows of his eyes he looked at the places where they had been
engraved. Then with the tip of the bone that had been his forefinger,
he wrote in luminous letters, like those lines which boys trace on
walls with the tip of a lucifer match:

"'Here reposes Jacques Olivant, who died at the age of fifty-one. He
hastened his father's death by his unkindness, as he wished to inherit
his fortune, he tortured his wife, tormented his children, deceived his
neighbors, robbed everyone he could, and died wretched.'

"When he had finished writing, the dead man stood motionless, looking
at his work. On turning round I saw that all the graves were open, that
all the dead bodies had emerged from them, and that all had effaced the
lies inscribed on the gravestones by their relations, substituting the
truth instead. And I saw that all had been the tormentors of their
neighbors--malicious, dishonest, hypocrites, liars, rogues,
calumniators, envious; that they had stolen, deceived, performed every
disgraceful, every abominable action, these good fathers, these
faithful wives, these devoted sons, these chaste daughters, these
honest tradesmen, these men and women who were called irreproachable.
They were all writing at the same time, on the threshold of their
eternal abode, the truth, the terrible and the holy truth of which
everybody was ignorant, or pretended to be ignorant, while they were
alive.

"I thought that SHE also must have written something on her tombstone,
and now running without any fear among the half-open coffins, among the
corpses and skeletons, I went toward her, sure that I should find her
immediately. I recognized her at once, without seeing her face, which
was covered by the winding-sheet, and on the marble cross, where
shortly before I had read:

"'She loved, was loved, and died.'

I now saw:

"'Having gone out in the rain one da