The wind from the ocean blew in gusts, increasing the flames, which died down, twisted and shot up again, throwing out thousands of sparks. They ran along the cliffs with lightning speed, and were lost in the sky, where they mingled with the stars and added to the number. Some sea birds were aroused and uttered their plaintive cries, as they flew in wide curves, passing with outstretched wings through the brilliant light, and disappearing again into the darkness.
Very soon the funeral pile was one mass of burning wood, not red, but yellow, a dazzling yellow, a furnace lashed by the wind. Suddenly it shook beneath a gust stronger than the others, collapsed in part, falling towards the sea. The corpse was uncovered and was quite visible, a dark patch on a bed of fire, burning with long blue flames. When the pile collapsed on the right hand side the corpse turned like a man in his bed. It was at once covered up with fresh wood, and the flames roared more furiously than before.
Seated in a semicircle on the shingle the Indians looked on with sad and serious faces. The rest of us, as it was cold, came close enough to the fire to feel the sparks and the smoke on our faces. There was no smell but that of pine and petroleum.
Hours passed and dawn appeared. Towards five o’clock nothing remained but a heap of ashes. The relatives picked them up, threw some into the air, some into the sea, and kept a little in a brass jar to be taken back to India. Then they withdrew to weep for the dead at home. In this fashion these young princes and their servants, with only the most elementary material, succeeded in cremating their relative with singular skill and remarkable dignity. Everything was accomplished in accordance with the rites and laws of their religion. The dead man rests in peace.
The following day there was great excitement in Étretat. Some pretended that a man had been burnt alive, others that it was an attempt to conceal a crime. It was said that the Mayor would be imprisoned; while certain people asserted that the Indian prince had succumbed to an attack of cholera. The men were amazed and the women indignant. All day a crowd lingered at the site of the funeral pile, looking for pieces of bone amongst the still warm shingle. Enough bones were picked up to make ten whole skeletons, for the farmers of the neighborhood often throw their dead sheep into the sea. The gamblers carefully placed these different fragments in their purses. But not one of them has a genuine piece of the Indian prince.
That evening a representative of the government came to hold an inquiry. He seemed, however, to view this strange case like a man of reason and intelligence. But what will he say in his report? The Indians declared that if they had been prevented from cremating their dead in France, they would have taken the corpse to a freer country, where they could conform to their own customs.
So I have seen a man burned on a funeral pile, and it has given me a desire to end in the same fashion. Everything is over at once. The slow work of nature is thus hastened by man, rather than retarded by a hideous coffin in which decomposition goes on for months. The body is dead and the spirit has departed. The purifying fire scatters in a few hours what was a human being, casting it to the winds, turning to air and ashes, instead of unspeakable putrefaction.
That is a clean and healthy method. Under the clay, in that closed box in which the body becomes pulp, a black stinking pulp, the process of putrefaction becomes something repugnant and atrocious. The coffin which descends into a muddy hole makes the heart ache, but the funeral pile flaming up to heaven has an element of greatness, beauty and solemnity.
Miss Harriet
There were seven of us in the drag, four women and three men, one of whom was on the box seat beside the coachman. We were following, at a walking pace, the winding coast road up the hill.
Having set out from Étretat at daybreak, in order to visit the ruins of Tancarville, we were still half asleep, benumbed by the fresh air of the morning. The women, especially, who were little accustomed to early rising, let their eyelids fall every moment, nodding their heads or yawning, quite insensible to the glory of the dawn.
It was autumn. On both sides of the road the bare fields stretched out, yellowed by the corn and wheat stubble which covered the soil like a badly shaved beard. The misty earth looked as if it were steaming. Larks were singing in the air, while other birds piped in the bushes.
At length the sun rose in front of us, a bright red on the edge of the horizon; and as it ascended, growing clearer from minute to minute, the country seemed to awake, to smile, to shake and stretch itself, like a young girl leaving her bed in a white chemise of vapour. The Comte d’Étraille, who was seated on the box, cried:
“Look! look! a hare!” and he stretched out his arm to the left, pointing to a patch of clover. The animal scurried along, almost concealed by the field, only its large ears visible. Then it swerved across a deep furrow, stopped, started off again at top speed, changed its course, stopped anew, uneasy, spying out every danger, and undecided as to the route it should take. Suddenly it began to run, with great bounds from its hind legs, disappearing finally in a large patch of beetroot. All the men had wakened up to watch the animal’s movements.
René Lemanoir then exclaimed:
“We are not at all gallant this morning,” and looking at his neighbor, the little Baronne de Sérennes, who was struggling with drowsiness, he said to
