When I went into the waiting-room at the station at Loubain, the first thing I did was to look at the clock, and I found that I had two hours and ten minutes to wait for the Paris express.

I felt suddenly tired, as if I had walked twenty miles, and then I looked about me as if I could find some means of killing the time on the station walls, and at last I went out again, and stopped outside the gates of the station, racking my brains to find something to do.  The street, which was a kind of a boulevard, planted with acacias, between two rows of houses of unequal shape and different styles of architecture, houses such as one only sees in a small town, ascended a slight hill, and at the extreme end of it, there were some trees, as if it ended in a park.

From time to time, a cat crossed the street, and jumped over the gutters, carefully.  A cur sniffed at every tree, and hunted for fragments from the kitchens, but I did not see a single human being, and I felt listless and disheartened.  What could I do with myself?  I was already thinking of the inevitable and interminable visit to the small cafe at the railway station, where I should have to sit over a glass of undrinkable beer and the illegible newspaper, when I saw a funeral procession coming out of a side street into the one in which I was, and the sight of the hearse was a relief to me.  It would, at any rate, give me something to do for ten minutes.  Suddenly, however, my curiosity was aroused.  The corpse was followed by eight gentlemen, one of whom was weeping, while the others were chatting together, but there was no priest, and I thought to myself: 

“This is a non-religious funeral,” but then I reflected that a town like Loubain must contain at least a hundred free-thinkers, who would have made a point of making a manifestation.  What could it be then?  The rapid pace of the procession clearly proved that the body was to be buried without ceremony, and, consequently, without the intervention of religion.

My idle curiosity framed the most complicated suppositions, and as the hearse passed me, a strange idea struck me, which was to follow it, with the eight gentlemen.  That would take up my time for an hour, at least, and I, accordingly, walked with the others, with a sad look on my face, and on seeing this, the two last turned round in surprise, and then spoke to each other in a low voice.

No doubt they were asking each other whether I belonged to the town, and then they consulted the two in front of them, who stared at me in turn.  This close attention which they paid me, annoyed me, and to put an end to it, I went up to them, and, after bowing, I said: 

“I beg your pardon, gentlemen, for interrupting your conversation, but seeing a civil funeral, I have followed it, although I did not know the deceased gentleman whom you are accompanying.”

“It is a woman,” one of them said.

I was much surprised at hearing this, and asked: