They were never afraid. The sympathy which seemed to hover around them
thrilled them and made them love the invisible beings whose soft touch
they often imagined they could feel, like a gentle flapping of wings.
Sometimes they were saddened by sweet melancholy, and could not
understand what the dead desired of them. They went on basking in their
innocent love, amidst this flood of sap, this abandoned cemetery, whose
rich soil teemed with life, and imperiously demanded their union. They
still remained ignorant of the meaning of the buzzing voices which they
heard ringing in their ears, the sudden glow which sent the blood flying
to their faces.
They often questioned each other about the remains which they
discovered. Miette, after a woman's fashion, was partial to lugubrious
subjects. At each new discovery she launched into endless suppositions.
If the bone were small, she spoke of some beautiful girl a prey to
consumption, or carried off by fever on the eve of her marriage; if the
bone were large, she pictured some big old man, a soldier or a judge,
some one who had inspired others with terror. For a long time the
tombstone particularly engaged their attention. One fine moonlight night
Miette distinguished some half-obliterated letters on one side of it,
and thereupon she made Silvere scrape the moss away with his knife. Then
they read the mutilated inscription: "Here lieth . . . Marie . . .
died . . ." And Miette, finding her own name on the stone, was quite
terror-stricken.
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