to see the order of things more clearly, don’t build the churches again!  They did not contain what we used to believe, and for centuries they have only been the prisons of the saviours, and monumental lies.  If you are still of the faith have your temples within yourselves.  But if you again bring stones to build up a narrow and evil tradition, that is the end of all.  In the name of justice, in the name of light, in the name of pity, do not build the churches again!”

But I did not say anything.  I bow my head and walk more heavily.

I see Madame Marcassin coming out of the church with blinking eyes, weary-looking, a widow indeed.  I bow and approach her and talk to her a little, humbly, about her husband, since I was under his orders and saw him die.  She listens to me in dejected inattention.  She is elsewhere.  She says to me at last, “I had a memorial service since it’s usual.”  Then she maintains a silence which means “There’s nothing to be said, just as there’s nothing to be done.”  In face of that emptiness I understand the crime that Marcassin committed in letting himself be killed for nothing but the glory of dying.

* * * * * *

CHAPTER XIX

GHOSTS

We have gone out together and aimlessly; we walk straight forward.

It is an autumnal day—­gray lace of clouds and wind.  Some dried leaves lie on the ground and others go whirling.  We are in August, but it is an autumn day all the same.  Days do not allow themselves to be set in strict order, like men.

Our steps take us in the direction of the waterfall and the mill.  We have seldom been there again since our engagement days.  Marie is covered in a big gray cloak; her hat is black silk with a little square of color embroidered in front.  She looks tired, and her eyes are red.  When she walks in front of me I see the twisted mass of her beautiful fair hair.

Instinctively we both looked for the inscriptions we cut, once upon a time, on trees and on stones, in foolish delight.  We sought them like scattered treasure, on the strange cheeks of the old willows, near the tendrils of the fall, on the birches that stand like candles in front of the violet thicket, and on the old fir which so often sheltered us with its dark wings.  Many inscriptions have disappeared.  Some are worn away because things do; some are covered by a host of other inscriptions or they are distorted and ugly.  Nearly all have passed on as if they had been passers-by.

Marie is tired.  She often sits down, with her big cloak and her sensible air; and as she sits she seems like a statue of nature, of space, and the wind.

We do not speak.  We have gone down along the side of the river—­slowly, as if we were climbing—­towards the stone seat of the wall.  The distances have altered.  This seat, for instance, we meet it sooner than we thought we should, like some one in the dark; but it is the seat all right.  The rose-tree which grew above it has withered away and become a crown of thorns.