I saw my wife led from the church. I longed to leap
down there among them and claim her, but that thought was madness, for I
should have been food for worms in a trice, so I kept my place.

XXVI. THE SECRET OF THE TAPESTRY

That evening, at eight o'clock, Jean Labrouk was buried. A shell had
burst not a dozen paces from his own door, within the consecrated
ground of the cathedral, and in a hole it had made he was laid, the only
mourners his wife and his grandfather, and two soldiers of his company
sent by General Bougainville to bury him. I watched the ceremony from
my loft, which had one small dormer window. It was dark, but burning
buildings in the Lower Town made all light about the place. I could hear
the grandfather mumbling and talking to the body as it was lowered into
the ground. While yet the priest was hastily reading prayers, a dusty
horseman came riding to the grave, and dismounted.

"Jean," he said, looking at the grave, "Jean Labrouk, a man dies well
that dies with his gaiters on, aho!... What have you said for Jean
Labrouk, m'sieu'?" he added to the priest.

The priest stared at him, as though he had presumed.

"Well?" said Gabord. "Well?"

The priest answered nothing, but prepared to go, whispering a word of
comfort to the poor wife. Gabord looked at the soldiers, looked at the
wife, at the priest, then spread out his legs and stuck his hands down
into his pockets, while his horse rubbed its nose against his shoulder.
He fixed his eyes on the grave, and nodded once or twice musingly.

"Well," he said at last, as if he had found a perfect virtue, and the
one or only thing that could be said, "well, he never eat his words,
that Jean."

A moment afterwards he came into the house with Babette, leaving one of
the soldiers holding his horse. After the old man had gone, I heard him
say, "Were you at mass to-day? And did you see all?"

And when she had answered yes, he continued: "It was a mating as birds
mate, but mating was it, and holy fathers and Master Devil Doltaire
can't change it till cock-pheasant Moray come rocketing to 's grave.
They would have hanged me for my part in it, but I repent not, for they
have wickedly hunted this little lady."

"I weep with her," said Jean's wife.

"Ay, ay, weep on, Babette," he answered.

"Has she asked help of you?" said the wife.

"Truly; but I know not what says she, for I read not, but I know her
pecking. Here it is. But you must be secret."