The third day, in a cool autumn morning, we followed the countess to her last home.  She was carried by the old huntsman, the two Martineaus, and Manette’s husband.  We went down by the road I had so joyously ascended the day I first returned to her.  We crossed the valley of the Indre to the little cemetery of Sache—­a poor village graveyard, placed behind the church on the slope of the hill, where with true humility she had asked to be buried beneath a simple cross of black wood, “like a poor country-woman,” she said.  When I saw, from the centre of the valley, the village church and the place of the graveyard a convulsive shudder seized me.  Alas! we have all our Golgothas, where we leave the first thirty-three years of our lives, with the lance-wound in our side, the crown of thorns and not of roses on our brow—­that hill-slope was to me the mount of expiation.

We were followed by an immense crowd, seeking to express the grief of the valley where she had silently buried so many noble actions.  Manette, her faithful woman, told me that when her savings did not suffice to help the poor she economized upon her dress.  There were babes to be provided for, naked children to be clothed, mothers succored in their need, sacks of flour brought to the millers in winter for helpless old men, a cow sent to some poor home,—­deeds of a Christian woman, a mother, and the lady of the manor.  Besides these things, there were dowries paid to enable loving hearts to marry; substitutes bought for youths to whom the draft had brought despair, tender offerings of the loving woman who had said:  “The happiness of others is the consolation of those who cannot themselves be happy.”  Such things, related at the “veillees,” made the crowd immense.  I walked with Jacques and the two abbes behind the coffin.  According to custom neither the count nor Madeleine were present; they remained alone at Clochegourde.  But Manette insisted in coming with us.  “Poor madame! poor madame! she is happy now,” I heard her saying to herself amid her sobs.

As the procession left the road to the mills I heard a simultaneous moan and a sound of weeping as though the valley were lamenting for its soul.  The church was filled with people.  After the service was over we went to the graveyard where she wished to be buried near the cross.  When I heard the pebbles and the gravel falling upon the coffin my courage gave way; I staggered and asked the two Martineaus to steady me.  They took me, half-dead, to the chateau of Sache, where the owners very kindly invited me to stay, and I accepted.  I will own to you that I dreaded a return to Clochegourde, and it was equally repugnant to me to go to Frapesle, where I could see my Henriette’s windows.  Here, at Sache, I was near her.  I lived for some days in a room which looked on the tranquil, solitary valley I have mentioned to you.  It is a deep recess among the hills, bordered by oaks that are doubly centenarian, through which a torrent rushes after rain.  The scene was in keeping with the stern and solemn meditations to which I desired to abandon myself.