the veiling, drenching downpour.
Five o'clock struck, grated out, stroke by stroke, from the wheezy chest
of the old clock; and then the silence fell again, seeming to grow yet
deeper, dimmer, and more despairing. The priest's painting work, as yet
scarcely dry, gave to the high altar and the wainscoting an appearance
of gloomy cleanliness, like that of some convent chapel where the sun
never shines. Grievous anguish seemed to fill the nave, splashed with
the blood that flowed from the limbs of the huge Christ; while, along
the walls, the fourteen scenes of the Passion displayed their awful
story in red and yellow daubs, reeking with horror. It was life that was
suffering the last agonies there, amidst that deathlike quiver of the
atmosphere, upon those altars which resembled tombs, in that bare vault
which looked like a sepulchre. The surroundings all spoke of slaughter
and gloom, terror and anguish and nothingness. A faint scent of incense
still lingered there, like the last expiring breath of some dead girl,
who had been hurriedly stifled beneath the flagstones.

'Ah,' said Albine at last, 'how sweet it used to be in the sunshine!
Don't you remember? One morning we walked past a hedge of tall rose
bushes, to the left of the flower-garden. I recollect the very colour of
the grass; it was almost blue, shot with green. When we reached the end
of the hedge we turned and walked back again, so sweet was the perfume
of the sunny air. And we did nothing else, that morning; we took just
twenty paces forward and then twenty paces back. It was so sweet a spot
you would not leave it. The bees buzzed all around; and there was a
tomtit that never left us, but skipped along by our side from branch to
branch. You whispered to me, "How delightful is life!" Ah! life! it was
the green grass, the trees, the running waters, the sky, and the sun,
amongst which we seemed all fair and golden.'

She mused for another moment and then continued: 'Life 'twas the
Paradou. How vast it used to seem to us! Never were we able to find the
end of it. The sea of foliage rolled freely with rustling waves as far
as the eye could reach. And all that glorious blue overhead! we were
free to grow, and soar, and roam, like the clouds without meeting more
obstacles than they. The very air was ours!'

She stopped and pointed to the low walls of the church.

'But, here, you are in a grave. You cannot stretch out your hand without
hurting it against the stone