“Nevermore will a face be born that is like hers.  Never, never!  The molds of statues are kept; casts are kept by which one can make objects with the same outlines and forms.  But that one body and that one face will never more be born again upon the earth.  And yet millions and millions of creatures will be born, and more than that, and this one woman will not reappear among all the women of the future.  Is it possible?  It drives one mad to think of it.

“She lived for twenty-years, not more, and she has disappeared forever, forever, forever!  She thought, she smiled, she loved me.  And now nothing!  The flies that die in the autumn are as much as we are in this world.  And now nothing!  And I thought that her body, her fresh body, so warm, so sweet, so white, so lovely, would rot down there in that box under the earth.  And her soul, her thought, her love—­where is it?

“Not to see her again!  The idea of this decomposing body, that I might yet recognize, haunted me.  I wanted to look at it once more.

“I went out with a spade, a lantern and a hammer; I jumped over the cemetery wall and I found the grave, which had not yet been closed entirely; I uncovered the coffin and took up a board.  An abominable odor, the stench of putrefaction, greeted my nostrils.  Oh, her bed perfumed with orris!

“Yet I opened the coffin, and, holding my lighted lantern down into it I saw her.  Her face was blue, swollen, frightful.  A black liquid had oozed out of her mouth.

“She!  That was she!  Horror seized me.  But I stretched out my arm to draw this monstrous face toward me.  And then I was caught.

“All night I have retained the foul odor of this putrid body, the odor of my well beloved, as one retains the perfume of a woman after a love embrace.

“Do with me what you will.”

A strange silence seemed to oppress the room.  They seemed to be waiting for something more.  The jury retired to deliberate.

When they came back a few minutes later the accused showed no fear and did not even seem to think.

The president announced with the usual formalities that his judges declared him to be not guilty.

He did not move and the room applauded.

   The Grave appeared in Gil Blas, July 29, 1883, under the signature
   of “Maufrigneuse.”