ing. Without daring to cast my eyes upon the
bed, I knelt down and commenced to repeat the Psalms for the Dead, with
exceeding fervour, thanking God that He had placed the tomb between
me and the memory of this woman, so that I might thereafter be able to
utter her name in my prayers as a name for ever sanctified by death.
But my fervour gradually weakened, and I fell insensibly into a reverie.
That chamber bore no semblance to a chamber of death. In lieu of the
fetid and cadaverous odours which I had been accustomed to breathe
during such funereal vigils, a languorous vapour of Oriental perfume--I
know not what amorous odour of woman--softly floated through the tepid
air. That pale light seemed rather a twilight gloom contrived for
voluptuous pleasure, than a substitute for the yellow-flickering
watch-tapers which shine by the side of corpses. I thought upon the
strange destiny which enabled me to meet Clarimonde again at the very
moment when she was lost to me for ever, and a sigh of regretful anguish
escaped from my breast. Then it seemed to me that some one behind me
had also sighed, and I turned round to look. It was only an echo. But in
that moment my eyes fell upon the bed of death which they had till then
avoided. The red damask curtains, decorated with large flowers worked in
embroidery and looped up with gold bullion, permitted me to behold the
fair dead, lying at full length, with hands joined upon her bosom. She
was covered with a linen wrapping of dazzling whiteness, which formed
a strong contrast with the gloomy purple of the hangings, and was of so
fine a texture that it concealed nothing of her body's charming form,
and allowed the eye to follow those beautiful outlines--undulating like
the neck of a swan--which even death had not robbed of their supple
grace. She seemed an alabaster statue executed by some skilful sculptor
to place upon the tomb of a queen, or rather, perhaps, like a slumbering
maiden over whom the silent snow had woven a spotless veil.

I could no longer maintain my constrained attitude of prayer. The air
of the alcove intoxicated me, that febrile perfume of half-faded roses
penetrated my very brain, and I commenced to pace restlessly up and down
the chamber, pausing at each turn before the bier to contemplate the
graceful corpse lying beneath the transparency of its shroud. Wild
fancies came thronging to my brain. I thought to myself that she might
not, perhaps, be really dead; that sh