“Well, there I was in Montmartre Cemetery, and was all at once filled with sadness, a sadness that is not all pain, a kind of sadness that makes you think when you are in good health, ’This place is not amusing, but my time has not come yet.’

“The feeling of autumn, of the warm moisture which is redolent of the death of the leaves, and the weakened, weary, anaemic sun increased, while rendering it poetical, the sensation of solitude and of finality that hovered over this spot which savors of human mortality.

“I walked along slowly amid these streets of tombs, where the neighbors do not visit each other, do not sleep together and do not read the newspapers.  And I began to read the epitaphs.  That is the most amusing thing in the world.  Never did Labiche or Meilhac make me laugh as I have laughed at the comical inscriptions on tombstones.  Oh, how much superior to the books of Paul de Kock for getting rid of the spleen are these marble slabs and these crosses where the relatives of the deceased have unburdened their sorrow, their desires for the happiness of the vanished ones and their hope of rejoining them—­humbugs!

“But I love above all in this cemetery the deserted portion, solitary, full of great yews and cypresses, the older portion, belonging to those dead long since, and which will soon be taken into use again; the growing trees nourished by the human corpses cut down in order to bury in rows beneath little slabs of marble those who have died more recently.

“When I had sauntered about long enough to refresh my mind I felt that I would soon have had enough of it and that I must place the faithful homage of my remembrance on my little friend’s last resting place.  I felt a tightening of the heart as I reached her grave.  Poor dear, she was so dainty, so loving and so white and fresh—­and now—­if one should open the grave—­

“Leaning over the iron grating, I told her of my sorrow in a low tone, which she doubtless did not hear, and was moving away when I saw a woman in black, in deep mourning, kneeling on the next grave.  Her crape veil was turned back, uncovering a pretty fair head, the hair in Madonna bands looking like rays of dawn beneath her sombre headdress.  I stayed.

“Surely she must be in profound grief.  She had covered her face with her hands and, standing there in meditation, rigid as a statue, given up to her grief, telling the sad rosary of her remembrances within the shadow of her concealed and closed eyes, she herself seemed like a dead person mourning another who was dead.  All at once a little motion of her back, like a flutter of wind through a willow, led me to suppose that she was going to cry.  She wept softly at first, then louder, with quick motions of her neck and shoulders.  Suddenly she uncovered her eyes.  They were full of tears and charming, the eyes of a bewildered woman, with which she glanced about her as if awaking from a nightmare.  She looked at me, seemed abashed and hid her face completely in her hands.  Then she sobbed convulsively, and her head slowly bent down toward the marble.  She leaned her forehead on it, and her veil spreading around her, covered the white corners of the beloved tomb, like a fresh token of mourning.  I heard her sigh, then she sank down with her cheek on the marble slab and remained motionless, unconscious.