Short Fiction

argument that she was so desperately lonely, and adding, ‘I must put on a lighter gown.’

“She went into her bedroom, and when she emerged she was dressed in half mourning, charming, refined and slender. She apparently had different costumes for street and for cemetery wear!

“Our dinner was most pleasant and cordial. She drank some champagne, thereby becoming very animated and lively, and we returned to her apartment together.

“This liaison, begun among tombstones, lasted about three weeks. But man tires of everything and especially of women. So I pleaded an urgent trip and left her. I was generous on leaving, for which she was duly thankful, making me promise and even swear that I would come back, for she really seemed to care a little for me.

“In the meantime I formed other attachments, and a month or so went by without the memory of this love being vivid enough to bring me back to this little graveyard mistress. Still, I had not forgotten her. She haunted me like a mystery, a psychological problem, like one of those inexplicable questions whose solution worries us.

“I can’t tell why, but one day I imagined that I should find her in the Montmartre cemetery. So I went back. I walked around a long time without meeting anyone but the usual visitors of the place, mourners who had not broken off all relations with their dead. The grave of the captain killed in Tonkin was deserted, without flowers, or wreaths.

“As I was passing through another part of this great city of Death, I suddenly saw a couple in deep mourning coming toward me through one of the narrow paths hedged with crosses. When they drew near, Oh, surprise! I recognized⁠—her! She saw me and blushed. As I brushed past her, she gave me a little wink that meant clearly: ‘Don’t recognize me,’ and also seemed to say: ‘Come and see me again, dearest.’

“The man who accompanied her was about fifty years old, fine-looking and distinguished, an officer of the Legion of Honour. He was helping her just as I had, when we left the cemetery together.

“I was utterly nonplussed, reluctant to believe what my eyes had just seen, and I wondered to what strange tribe of creatures this graveyard huntress belonged. Was she merely a clever courtesan, an inspired prostitute, who haunted cemeteries for men disconsolate at the loss of some woman, a mistress or a wife, and hungering for past caresses? Is she unique? Are there others? Is it a profession? Are the cemeteries worked like the streets? Are there graveyard sirens? Or had she alone conceived the idea⁠—wonderful for its deep philosophy⁠—of exploiting the amorous regrets awakened in these funereal places? I would have given a great deal to know whose widow she was that day!”

After

“My dears, you must go to bed,” the Countess said. The three children, two girls and one boy, got up and kissed their grandmother, then went to say good night to the priest, who dined at the château every Thursday.

Abbé Mauduit took two of them on his knees, putting his long black-covered arms round their necks, and, bringing the two heads close together with a paternal gesture, he kissed them tenderly on the brow. Then he put them down. The youngsters went off, the boy leading the way.

“You love children, your Reverence,” the Countess remarked.

“Very much, Madame.”

The old lady raised her clear eyes to the priest and said: “And⁠—has solitude never weighed upon you?”

“Yes, sometimes.”

He was silent, hesitated, then continued: “But I was never meant for an ordinary life.”

“What do you know about it?”

“Oh! I know that very well. I was meant to be a priest. I have followed my vocation.”

The Countess, still looking at him, said: “Come, your Reverence, tell me, tell me how you came to renounce all that makes the rest of us love life, all that brings us support and consolation. Who induced you, what made you decide to turn aside from the broad path natural to man: from marriage, from family life? You are neither fanatical, exalted, gloomy nor sad. Was it some event in your life, some sorrow, which decided you to take the vows?”

Abbé Mauduit rose and, crossing the room, held up his heavy country shoes to the fire. He seemed to be still hesitating. He was a tall, white-haired old man who had officiated in the commune of Saint-Antoine-du-Rocher for twenty years. The peasants all said: “There’s a good man for you!”

He was indeed a good man, benevolent, friendly, gentle and, above all, generous. Like St. Martin, he would have divided his coat in two. He laughed readily and it took little to make him cry like a woman; this rather prejudiced the hardheaded villagers against him. The old Countess de Saville, who had retired to her château du Rocher to educate her grandchildren after the death of her son and daughter-in-law, was very fond of her priest, and said: “He’s a great heart.”

Every Thursday he spent the evening with the Lady of the Manor. They had become fast friends in their old age. With half a word they understood each other on almost every subject, being both of them good in a simple, natural way.

She insisted: “Come, your Reverence, it is your turn to confess.”

He repeated: “I was not meant for an ordinary life. I realised that in time, fortunately, and I have often made the remark that I was right.

“My parents, who were rather wealthy drapers at Verdiers, were very ambitious on my account. I was sent to a boarding-school very young. No one knows what a child suffers at school, lonely and separated from his own people. That monotonous life, bereft of all affection, is good for some, but hateful for others. The young are often much more sensitive than they are thought to be, and by cooping them up too early away from those they love, an excess of sensitiveness may be developed and may become abnormal and full of danger.

“I rarely played: