Short Stories, vol 10 | Page 9

"He asked, 'Will you come and see her grave?' I nodded assent, for I
couldn't speak. He rose, lighted a lantern, and we walked through the
blinding rain by the light of the lantern.

"He opened a gate, and I saw some crosses of black wood.
"Suddenly he stopped before a marble slab and said: 'There it is,' and he
flashed the lantern close to it so that I could read the inscription:
"'TO LOUISE HORTENSE MARINET, "'Wife of Jean-Francois
Lebrument, Farmer, "'SHE WAS A FAITHFUL WIFE. GOD REST
HER SOUL.'
"We fell on our knees in the damp grass, he and I, with the lantern
between us, and I saw the rain beating on the white marble slab. And I
thought of the heart of her sleeping there in her grave. Ah! poor heart!
poor heart! Since then I come here every year. And I don't know why,
but I feel as if I were guilty of some crime in the presence of this man
who always looks as if he forgave me."

THE DEVIL
The peasant and the doctor stood on opposite sides of the bed, beside
the old, dying woman. She was calm and resigned and her mind quite
clear as she looked at them and listened to their conversation. She was
going to die, and she did not rebel at it, for her time was come, as she
was ninety-two.
The July sun streamed in at the window and the open door and cast its
hot flames on the uneven brown clay floor, which had been stamped
down by four generations of clodhoppers. The smell of the fields came
in also, driven by the sharp wind and parched by the noontide heat. The
grass- hoppers chirped themselves hoarse, and filled the country with
their shrill noise, which was like that of the wooden toys which are sold
to children at fair time.
The doctor raised his voice and said: "Honore, you cannot leave your
mother in this state; she may die at any moment." And the peasant, in
great distress, replied: "But I must get in my wheat, for it has been
lying on the ground a long time, and the weather is just right for it;
what do you say about it, mother?" And the dying old woman, still
tormented by her Norman avariciousness, replied yes with her eyes and
her forehead, and thus urged her son to get in his wheat, and to leave
her to die alone.
But the doctor got angry, and, stamping his foot, he said: "You are no
better than a brute, do you hear, and I will not allow you to do it, do
you understand? And if you must get in your wheat today, go and fetch

Rapet's wife and make her look after your mother; I will have it, do you
understand me? And if you do not obey me, I will let you die like a dog,
when you are ill in your turn; do you hear?"
The peasant, a tall, thin fellow with slow movements, who was
tormented by indecision, by his fear of the doctor and his fierce love of
saving, hesitated, calculated, and stammered out: "How much does La
Rapet charge for attending sick people?" "How should I know?" the
doctor cried. "That depends upon how long she is needed. Settle it with
her, by Heaven! But I want her to be here within an hour, do you hear?"
So the man decided. "I will go for her," he replied; "don't get angry,
doctor." And the latter left, calling out as he went: "Be careful, be very
careful, you know, for I do not joke when I am angry!" As soon as they
were alone the peasant turned to his mother and said in a resigned voice:
"I will go and fetch La Rapet, as the man will have it. Don't worry till I
get back."
And he went out in his turn.
La Rapet, old was an old washerwoman, watched the dead and the
dying of the neighborhood, and then, as soon as she had sewn her
customers into that linen cloth from which they would emerge no more,
she went and took up her iron to smooth out the linen of the living.
Wrinkled like a last year's apple, spiteful, envious, avaricious with a
phenomenal avarice, bent double, as if she had been broken in half
across the loins by the constant motion of passing the iron over the
linen, one might have said that she had a kind of abnormal and cynical
love of a death struggle. She never spoke of anything but of the people
she had seen die, of the various kinds of deaths at which she had been
present, and she related with the greatest minuteness details which