rifice both, for such an existence as I was
leading could not last.... Father Serapion procured a
mattock, a crowbar, and a lantern, and at midnight we set
out for the cemetery, whose plan and arrangements he knew
well. After directing the rays of the dark lantern on the
inscriptions of several graves, we came at last to a stone
half buried under tall grass, and covered with moss and
lichen, whereon we deciphered this epitaph, "Here lies
Clarimonde, who in her lifetime was the fairest in the
world." "'Tis here," said Serapion; and, placing his lantern
on the ground, he slipped the crowbar into the chinks of the
slab and essayed to lift it. The stone yielded, and he set
to work with the spade. As for me, stiller and more gloomy
than the night itself, I watched him at work, while he,
bending over his ill-omened task, sweated and panted, his
forced and heavy breath sounding like the gasps of the
dying. The sight was strange, and lookers-on would rather
have taken us for tomb-breakers and robbers of the dead than
for God's priests. The zeal of Serapion was of so harsh and
savage a cast, that it gave him a look more of the demon
than of the apostle or the angel, and his face, with its
severe features deeply marked by the glimmer of the lantern,
was hardly reassuring. A cold sweat gathered on my limbs and
my hair stood on end. In my heart I held Serapion's deed to
be an abominable sacrilege, and I could have wished that a
flash of lightning might issue from the womb of the heavy
clouds, which rolled low above our heads, and burn him to
ashes. The owls perched about the cypress trees, and,
disturbed by the lantern, came and flapped its panes heavily
with their dusty wings, the foxes barked in the distance,
and a thousand sinister echoes troubled the silence. At
length Serapion's spade struck the coffin with the terrible
hollow sound that nothingness returns to those who intrude
on it. He lifted the lid, and I saw Clarimonde, as pale as
marble, and with her hands joined; there was no fold in her
snow-white shroud from head to foot; at the corner of her
blanched lips there shone one little rosy drop. At the sight
Serapion broke into fury. "Ah! fiend, foul harlot, drinker
of gold and blood, we have found you!" said he, and he
scattered