as going to see her; to step on the ground which covered her body;
to breathe an atmosphere in which there was still perhaps some of that
warmth which was the breath of the dead woman's soul. What would he say
to her?

As he entered the graveyard he looked at the keeper, an ugly, dismal old
fellow, as pale and yellow and greasy as a wax candle. That man lived
constantly near Josephina! He was seized with generous gratitude; he had
to restrain himself, thinking of his companion, or he would have given
him all the money he had with him.

Their steps resounded in the silence. They felt the murmuring calm of an
abandoned garden about them, where there were more pavilions and statues
than trees. They went down ruined colonnades, which echoed their steps
strangely; over slabs which sounded hollow under their feet,--the void,
trembling at the light touch of life.

The dead who slept there were dead indeed, without the least
resurrection of memory, completely deserted, sharing in the universal
decay,--unnamed, separated from life forever. From the beehive close by,
no one came to give new life with tears and offerings to the ephemeral
personality they once had, to the name which marked them for a moment.

Wreaths hung from the crosses, black and unraveled, with a swarm of
insects in their fragments. The exuberant vegetation, where no one ever
passed, stretched in every direction, loosening the tombstones with its
roots, springing the steps of the resounding stairways. The rain, slowly
filtering through the ground, had produced hollows. Some of the slabs
were cracked open, revealing deep holes.

They had to walk carefully, fearing that the hollow ground would
suddenly open; they had to avoid the depressions where a stone with
letters of pale gold and noble coats-of-arms lay half on its side.

The painter walked trembling with the sadness of an immense
disappointment, questioning the value of his greatest interests. And
this was life! Human beauty ended like this! This was all that the human
mind came to and here it must stop in all its pride!

"Here it is!" said Cotoner.

They had entered between two rows of tombs so close together that as
they passed they brushed against the old ornaments which crumbled and
fell at the touch.

It was a simple tomb, a sort of coffin of white marble which rose a few
inches above the ground, with an elevation at one end, like the bolster
of a bed and surmounted by a cross.

Renovales w