white and blue wreaths, on a level
with the soil; and that peaceful field of repose, so soft in colour,
with the bluish tint of milk about it, seemed to have been made flowery
by all the childhood lying in the earth. The crosses recorded various
ages, two years, sixteen months, five months. One poor little cross,
destitute of any railing, was out of line, having been set up slantingly
across a path, and it simply bore the words: 'Eugenie, three days.'
Scarcely to exist as yet, and withal to sleep there already, alone, on
one side, like the children who on festive occasions dine at a little
side table!

However, the hearse had at last stopped, in the middle of the avenue;
and when Sandoz saw the grave ready at the corner of the next division,
in front of the cemetery of the little ones, he murmured tenderly:

'Ah! my poor old Claude, with your big child's heart, you will be in
your place beside them.'

The under-bearers removed the coffin from the hearse. The priest, who
looked surly, stood waiting in the wind; some sextons were there with
their shovels. Three neighbours had fallen off on the road, the ten had
dwindled into seven. The second cousin, who had been holding his hat in
his hand since leaving the church, despite the frightful weather, now
drew nearer. All the others uncovered, and the prayers were about to
begin, when a loud piercing whistle made everybody look up.

Beyond this corner of the cemetery as yet untenanted, at the end of
lateral Avenue No. 3, a train was passing along the high embankment of
the circular railway which overlooked the graveyard. The grassy slope
rose up, and a number of geometrical lines, as it were, stood out
blackly against the grey sky; there were telegraph-posts, connected by
thin wires, a superintendent's box, and a red signal plate, the only
bright throbbing speck visible. When the train rolled past, with its
thunder-crash, one plainly distinguished, as on the transparency of a
shadow play, the silhouettes of the carriages, even the heads of the
passengers showing in the light gaps left by the windows. And the line
became clear again, showing like a simple ink stroke across the horizon;
while far away other whistles called and wailed unceasingly, shrill with
anger, hoarse with suffering, or husky with distress. Then a guard's
horn resounded lugubriously.

'_Revertitur in terram suam unde erat_,' recited the priest, who had
opened a book and was making haste.

But he was