existence could not last long and be endured.The Abbe Serapion provided himself with a mattock, a lever, and alantern, and at midnight we wended our way to the cemetery of ------,the location and place of which were perfectly familiar to him. Afterhaving directed the rays of the dark lantern upon the inscriptions ofseveral tombs, we came at last upon a great slab, half concealed byhuge weeds and devoured by mosses and parasitic plants, whereupon wedeciphered the opening lines of the epitaph:
Here lies Clarimonde Who was famed in her life-time As the fairest of women.*
* Ici git Clarimonde Qui fut de son vivant La plus belle du monde.
The broken beauty of the lines is unavoidably lost in the translation.
'It is here without a doubt,' muttered Serapion, and placing his lanternon the ground, he forced the point of the lever under the edge of thestone and commenced to raise it. The stone yielded, and he proceeded towork with the mattock. Darker and more silent than the night itself, Istood by and watched him do it, while he, bending over his dismal toil,streamed with sweat, panted, and his hard-coming breath seemed to havethe harsh tone of a death rattle. It was a weird scene, and had anypersons from without beheld us, they would assuredly have taken usrather for profane wretches and shroud-stealers than for priests of God.There was something grim and fierce in Serapion's zeal which lent himthe air of a demon rather than of an apostle or an angel, and his greataquiline face, with all its stern features, brought out in strong reliefby the lantern-light, had something fearsome in it which enhanced theunpleasant fancy. I felt an icy sweat come out upon my forehead in hugebeads, and my hair stood up with a hideous fear. Within the depths of myown heart I felt that the act of the austere Serapion was an abominablesacrilege; and I could have prayed that a triangle of fire would issuefrom the entrails of the dark clouds, heavily rolling above us,to reduce him to cinders. The owls which had been nestling in thecypress-trees, startled by the gleam of the lantern, flew against itfrom time to time, striking their dusty wings against its panes, anduttering plaintive cries of lamentation; wild foxes yelped in the fardarkness, and a thousand sinister noises detached themselves from thesilence. At last Sera-pion's mattock struck the coffin itself, makingits planks re-echo with a deep sonorous sound, with that terrible soundnothingness utters when stricken. He wrenched apart and tore up thelid, and I beheld Clarimonde, pallid as a figure of marble, with handsjoined; her white winding-sheet made but one fold from her head to herfeet. A little crimson drop sparkled like a speck of dew at one cornerof her colourless mouth. Serapion, at this spectacle, burst into fury:'Ah, thou art here, demon! Impure courtesan! Drinker of blood and gold!'And he flung holy water upon the corpse and the coffin, over which hetraced the sign of the cross with his sprinkler. Poor Clarimonde hadno sooner been touched by the blessed spray than her beautiful bodycrumbled into dust, and became only a shapeless and frightful mass ofcinders and half-calcined bones.
'Behold your mistress, my Lord Romuald!' cried the inexorable priest, ashe pointed to these sad remains. 'Will you be easily tempted after thisto promenade on the Lido or at Fusina with your beauty?' I covered myface with my hands, a vast ruin had taken place within me. I returnedto my presbytery, and the noble Lord Romuald, the lover of Clarimonde,separated himself from the poor priest with whom he had kept suchstrange company so long. But once only, the following night, I sawClarimonde. She said to me, as she had said the first time at theportals of the church: 'Unhappy man! Unhappy man! What hast thou done?Wherefore have hearkened to that imbecile priest? Wert thou not happy?And what harm had I ever done thee that thou shouldst violate my poortomb, and lay bare the miseries of my nothingness? All communicationbetween our souls and our bodies is henceforth for ever broken. Adieu!Thou wilt yet regret me!' She vanished in air as smoke, and I never sawher more.
Alas! she spoke truly indeed. I have regretted her more than once, and Iregret her still. My soul's peace has been very dearly bought. Thelove of God was not too much to replace such a love as hers. And this,brother, is the story of my youth. Never gaze upon a woman, and walkabroad only with eyes ever fixed upon the ground; for however chaste andwatchful one may be, the error of a single moment is enough to make onelose eternity.
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