The men buried the horse at the place where he had
died of hunger. And the grass grew thick, green
and vigorous, fed by the poor body.
The woman had died without pain, quietly, as a woman
should whose life had been blameless. Now she
was resting in her bed, lying on her back, her eyes
closed, her features calm, her long white hair carefully
arranged as though she had done it up ten minutes before
dying. The whole pale countenance of the dead
woman was so collected, so calm, so resigned that
one could feel what a sweet soul had lived in that
body, what a quiet existence this old soul had led,
how easy and pure the death of this parent had been.
Kneeling beside the bed, her son, a magistrate with
inflexible principles, and her daughter, Marguerite,
known as Sister Eulalie, were weeping as though their
hearts would break. She had, from childhood up,
armed them with a strict moral code, teaching them
religion, without weakness, and duty, without compromise.
He, the man, had become a judge and handled the law
as a weapon with which he smote the weak ones without
pity. She, the girl, influenced by the virtue
which had bathed her in this austere family, had become
the bride of the Church through her loathing for man.
They had hardly known their father, knowing only that
he had made their mother most unhappy, without being
told any other details.
The nun was wildly-kissing the dead woman’s
hand, an ivory hand as white as the large crucifix
lying across the bed. On the other side of the
long body the other hand seemed still to be holding
the sheet in the death grasp; and the sheet had preserved
the little creases as a memory of those last movements
which precede eternal immobility.
A few light taps on the door caused the two sobbing
heads to look up, and the priest, who had just come
from dinner, returned. He was red and out of
breath from his interrupted digestion, for he had made
himself a strong mixture of coffee and brandy in order
to combat the fatigue of the last few nights and of
the wake which was beginning.
He looked sad, with that assumed sadness of the priest
for whom death is a bread winner. He crossed
himself and approaching with his professional gesture:
“Well, my poor children! I have come to
help you pass these last sad hours.” But
Sister Eulalie suddenly arose. “Thank you,
father, but my brother and I prefer to remain alone
with her. This is our last chance to see her,
and we wish to be together, all three of us, as we—we—used
to be when we were small and our poor mo—mother——”
Grief and tears stopped her; she could not continue.
Once more serene, the priest bowed, thinking of his
bed. “As you wish, my children.”
He kneeled, crossed himself, prayed, arose and went
out quietly, murmuring: “She was a saint!”
