The vigorous vegetation and the quivering, deathlike stillness of the old cemetery still reign in this path.

In all the country round Plassans there is no spot more instinct with languor, solitude, and love.

It is a most delightful place for love-making.

When the cemetery was being cleared the bones must have been heaped up in this corner; for even to-day it frequently happens that one's foot comes across some fragment of a skull lying concealed in the damp turf.
Nobody, however, now thinks of the bodies that once slept under that turf.

In the daytime only the children go behind the piles of wood when playing at hide and seek.