In
the background, the women kneeling in the grass, throwing back their
hoods and their big white caps, the starched wings of which fluttered in
the wind, appeared at a distance like an immense winding-sheet hovering
over the earth.
When the corpse reappeared, the prayers began again, and the sobs broke
out anew, and could be heard through the dropping rain.
Not far from us, issued, at regular intervals, a sort of subdued gurgle
that sounded like laughter. In any other place, a person hearing it
would have thought it the repressed explosion of some overwhelming joy
or the paroxysm of a delirious happiness. It was the widow, weeping.
Then she walked to the edge of the grave, as did the rest of the
mourners, and little by little, the soil assumed its ordinary level and
everybody went home.
As we walked down the cemetery steps, a young fellow passed us and said
in French to a companion: "Heavens! didn't the fellow stink! He is
almost completely mortified! It isn't surprising, though, after being in
the water three weeks!"
* * * * *
One morning we started as on other mornings; we chose the same road, and
passed the hedge of young elms and the sloping meadow where the day
before we had seen a little girl chasing cattle to the drinking-trough;
but it was the last day, and the last time perhaps, that we should pass
that way.
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