ytes with censers, the former intoning the service:

Fidelium Deus omnium conditor--

A solemn peace fell upon the young girl as she entered and she seemed
to leave behind her all disturbing emotions, finding refuge in the
supreme tranquillity of this ancient city of the dead. She was
surrounded by a resigned grief, a sorrow so dignified that it did not
clash with the sweeter influences of nature. The monotonous sound of
the words of the priests harmonized with the scene. The tongue of a
nation that had been resolved into the elements was fitting in this
place, where time and desolation had left their imprint in discolored
marble, inscriptions almost effaced, and clambering vines.

--Animabus famulorum--

To many the words so mournfully intoned brought solace and surcease
from sorrow. The sisters of charity moved among the throng with grave,
pale faces, mere shadows of their earthly selves, as though they had
undergone the first stage of the great metamorphosis which is
promised. To them, who had already buried health, vitality and
passion, was not this chant to the dead, this strange intoning of
words, sweeter than the lullaby crooned by a nurse to a child, more
stirring than the patriotic hymn to a soldier, and fraught with more
fervor than the romantic dream of a lover?

Ut indulgentiam, quam semper optaverunt--

The little orphan children heard and heeded no more than the butterfly
which lighted upon the engraven words, "Dust to dust," and poised
gracefully, as it bathed in the sunshine, stretching its wings in
wantonness of beauty.

Piis supplicationibus consequantur--

Now Constance smiled to see the little ones playing on the steps of a
monument. It was the tomb of a great jurist, a man of dignity during
his mundane existence, his head crammed with those precepts which are
devised for the temporal well-being of that fabric, sometimes termed
society, and again, civilization. The poor waifs, with suppressed
laughter--they dared not give full vent to their merriment with the
black-robed sisters not far away--ran around the steps, unmindful of
the inscription which might have been written by a Johnson, and as
unconscious of unseemly conduct as the insects that hummed in the
grass.

"Hush!" whispered one of the sisters, as a funeral cortege approached.

The children, wide-eyed in awe and wonder, desisted in their play.

"It is an ol