h fright, ready to shout out, ready to
die.

"Suddenly, it seemed to me as if the slab of marble on which I was
sitting, was moving. Certainly, it was moving, as if it were being
raised. With a bound, I sprang on to the neighboring tomb, and I saw,
yes, I distinctly saw the stone which I had just quitted, rise upright,
and the dead person appeared, a naked skeleton, which was pushing the
stone back with its bent back. I saw it quite clearly, although the
night was so dark. On the cross I could read:

"'_Here lies Jacques Olivant, who died at the age of fifty-one. He loved
his family, was kind and honorable, and died in the grace of the Lord._'

"The dead man also read what was inscribed on his tombstone; then he
picked up a stone off the path, a little, pointed stone, and began to
scrape the letters carefully. He slowly effaced them altogether, and
with the hollows of his eyes he looked at the places where they had been
engraved, and, with the tip of the bone, that had been his forefinger,
he wrote in luminous letters, like those lines which one traces on walls
with the tip of a lucifer match:

"'_Here reposes Jacques Olivant, who died at the age of fifty-one. He
hastened his father's death by his unkindness, as he wished to inherit
his fortune, he tortured his wife, tormented his children, deceived his
neighbors, robbed everyone he could, and died wretched._'

"When he had finished writing, the dead man stood motionless, looking at
his work, and on turning round I saw that all the graves were open, that
all the dead bodies had emerged from them, and that all had effaced the
lies inscribed on the gravestones by their relations, and had
substituted the truth instead. And I saw that all had been tormentors of
their neighbors--malicious, dishonest, hypocrites, liars, rogues,
calumniators, envious; that they had stolen, deceived, performed every
disgraceful, every abominable action, these good fathers, these faithful
wives, these devoted sons, these chaste daughters, these honest
tradesmen, these men and women who were called irreproachable, and they
were called irreproachable, and they were all writing at the same time,
on the threshold of their eternal abode, the truth, the terrible and the
holy truth which everybody is ignorant of, or pretends to be ignorant
of, while the others are alive.

"I thought that _she_ also must have written something on her tombstone,
and now, running without any fear among the half-open