shielding his head with the psalm-book, then something heavy and long covered with flowers and wreaths which some men carried shaking at their knees, then the crowd, a crawling crowd which filled the courtyard, wound itself out on the road, a crowd in which I could distinguish no one except my cousin Merel who was mopping his head with a checkered handkerchief. Ding! Dong! Dong! The church bell tolled for a long, long time; ah! the sad knell! Ding! Dong! Dong! And while the bells were tolling, tolling, three white pigeons continuously fluttered about, pursuing one another around the church right opposite me which projected its warped roof and its slate steeple out of plumb above a clump of acacia and chestnut trees.
The ceremony ended, my father entered my room. He walked back and forth for some time without speaking, his arms crossed on his back.
"Ah! my poor Monsieur," lamented old Marie, "what a terrible misfortune!"
"Yes, yes," replied my father, "it is a great, a terrible misfortune!"
He sank into an armchair, heaving a sigh. I can see him right now with his swollen eyelids, his dejected look, his hanging arms. He had a handkerchief in his hand, and from time to time brought it to his eyes, red from tears.
"Perhaps I did not take good care of her, Marie. . . . She did not like to have me around. . . . Yet I did what I could, everything I could. . . . How frightful she looked, all rigid on the bed! . . . Ah, God! I shall always see her that way. The day after tomorrow she would be thirty-one, would she not?"
My father drew me toward him and seated me on his knees.
"You love me all the same, don't you, my little
