Four Short Stories By Emile Zola eBook

Émile Gaboriau
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 771 pages of information about Four Short Stories By Emile Zola.

Four Short Stories By Emile Zola eBook

Émile Gaboriau
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 771 pages of information about Four Short Stories By Emile Zola.

I remained for a time lying on my back in the open grave, with my eyes raised to heaven.  It was dark; the stars were shining in a sky of velvety blueness.  Now and then the rising breeze wafted a springlike freshness, a perfume of foliage, upon me.  I was saved!  I could breathe; I felt warm, and I wept and I stammered, with my arms prayerfully extended toward the starry sky.  O God, how sweet seemed life!

CHAPTER V

MY RESURRECTION

My first impulse was to find the custodian of the cemetery and ask him to have me conducted home, but various thoughts that came to me restrained me from following that course.  My return would create general alarm; why should I hurry now that I was master of the situation?  I felt my limbs; I had only an insignificant wound on my left arm, where I had bitten myself, and a slight feverishness lent me unhoped-for strength.  I should no doubt be able to walk unaided.

Still I lingered; all sorts of dim visions confused my mind.  I had felt beside me in the open grave some sextons’ tools which had been left there, and I conceived a sudden desire to repair the damage I had done, to close up the hole through which I had crept, so as to conceal all traces of my resurrection.  I do not believe that I had any positive motive in doing so.  I only deemed it useless to proclaim my adventure aloud, feeling ashamed to find myself alive when the whole world thought me dead.  In half an hour every trace of my escape was obliterated, and then I climbed out of the hole.

The night was splendid, and deep silence reigned in the cemetery; the black trees threw motionless shadows over the white tombs.  When I endeavored to ascertain my bearings I noticed that one half of the sky was ruddy, as if lit by a huge conflagration; Paris lay in that direction, and I moved toward it, following a long avenue amid the darkness of the branches.

However, after I had gone some fifty yards I was compelled to stop, feeling faint and weary.  I then sat down on a stone bench and for the first time looked at myself.  I was fully attired with the exception that I had no hat.  I blessed my beloved Marguerite for the pious thought which had prompted her to dress me in my best clothes—­those which I had worn at our wedding.  That remembrance of my wife brought me to my feet again.  I longed to see her without delay.

At the farther end of the avenue I had taken a wall arrested my progress.  However, I climbed to the top of a monument, reached the summit of the wall and then dropped over the other side.  Although roughly shaken by the fall, I managed to walk for a few minutes along a broad deserted street skirting the cemetery.  I had no notion as to where I might be, but with the reiteration of monomania I kept saying to myself that I was going toward Paris and that I should find the Rue Dauphine somehow or other.  Several people passed me but, seized with sudden distrust, I would not stop them and ask my way.  I have since realized that I was then in a burning fever and already nearly delirious.  Finally, just as I reached a large thoroughfare, I became giddy and fell heavily upon the pavement.

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Four Short Stories By Emile Zola from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.