which you can obtain relief from
this continual torment, and though it is an extreme measure it must be
made use of; violent diseases require violent remedies. I know where
Clarimonde is buried. It is necessary that we shall disinter her
remains, and that you shall behold in how pitiable a state the object of
your love is. Then you will no longer be tempted to lose your soul for
the sake of an unclean corpse devoured by worms, and ready to crumble
into dust. That will assuredly restore you to yourself.' For my part, I
was so tired of this double life that I at once consented, desiring to
ascertain beyond a doubt whether a priest or a gentleman had been the
victim of delusion. I had become fully resolved either to kill one of
the two men within me for the benefit of the other, or else to kill
both, for so terrible an existence could not last long and be endured.
The Abbe Serapion provided himself with a mattock, a lever, and a
lantern, and at midnight we wended our way to the cemetery of ------,
the location and place of which were perfectly familiar to him. After
having directed the rays of the dark lantern upon the inscriptions of
several tombs, we came at last upon a great slab, half concealed by
huge weeds and devoured by mosses and parasitic plants, whereupon we
deciphered the opening lines of the epitaph:

Here lies Clarimonde
Who was famed in her life-time
As the fairest of women.*

* Ici git Clarimonde
Qui fut de son vivant
La plus belle du monde.

The broken beauty of the lines is unavoidably
lost in the translation.

'It is here without a doubt,' muttered Serapion, and placing his lantern
on the ground, he forced the point of the lever under the edge of the
stone and commenced to raise it. The stone yielded, and he proceeded to
work with the mattock. Darker and more silent than the night itself, I
stood by and watched him do it, while he, bending over his dismal toil,
streamed with sweat, panted, and his hard-coming breath seemed to have
the harsh tone of a death rattle. It was a weird scene, and had any
persons from without beheld us, they would assuredly have taken us
rather for profane wretches and shroud-stealers than for priests of God.
There was something grim and fierce in Serapion's zeal which lent him
the air of a demon rather than of an apostle or an angel, and his great
aquiline face, with all its stern features, brought out in s