body that it may pass through Earth to Heaven, and there find finer grades of being, higher forms of development, greater opportunities of perfection.  And for the Soul, which is Thine own breath of fire, O God, receive it, purified from sin, and make it worthy of the final purpose for which Thou hast destined it from the beginning!  And grant unto us, left here to still work out our own salvation on this the planet Thou hast chosen for our trial, the power to comprehend Thy laws, and faithfully to obey them,—­to forgive as we would be forgiven,—­to love as we would be loved,—­and to lift our thoughts from the appearance of this grave to the Reality of Thy beneficence, which hath ordained Light out of Darkness, and out of Death, Life, as proved most gloriously to us by Christ our Brother, our Teacher and our Master!  Amen!”

His prayer finished, the young man rose, and taking a wreath of ivy, which he had travelled to Touraine himself to bring from the walls of the simple cottage where his mother had lived and worked and died, he dropped it gently on the coffin and signed to the grave-diggers to fill in the earth.  Then turning to the crowd, he said,

“My friends, I thank you all for the sympathy which has brought you here to-day.  ‘It is finished.’  The dead man is at rest!  And now as you go,—­as you return to your own homes,—­homes happy or unhappy as the case may be, I will only ask you to remember that there is no permanence or virtue in falsehood whether it be falsehood religious or falsehood political,—­and he who dies truthfully dealing with his fellow-men, lives again with God, and is not, as Scripture says ‘dead in his sins,’ but born again to a new and more hopeful existence!”

With the last words he gave the sign of dismissal.  The people began to disperse slowly and somewhat reluctantly, every member of the crowd being curious to obtain a nearer view of the young orator who not only spoke his thoughts fearlessly, but whose pen was as a scythe mowing down a harvest of shams and hypocrisies, and whose frank utterance from the heart was so honest as to be absolutely convincing to the public.  But he, after giving a few further instructions to the men who were beginning to close in his father’s grave, walked away with one or two friends, and was soon lost to sight in one of the many winding paths that led from the cemetery out into the road, so that many who anxiously sought to study his features more nearly, were disappointed.  One person there was, who had listened to his oration in wonder and open-mouthed admiration,—­ this was Jean Patoux.  He had taken the opportunity offered him in a “cheap excursion” from Rouen to Paris, to visit a cousin of his who was a small florist owning a shop in the Rue St. Honore,—­and by chance, he and this same cousin, while quietly walking together down one of the boulevards, had got entangled in the press of people who were pouring into Pere-la-Chaise on this occasion, and had followed them out of curiosity, not at all knowing what they were going to see.  But the florist, known as Pierre Midon, soon realised the situation and explained it all to his provincial relative.