In the background, the women kneeling in the grass, throwing back their hoods and their big white caps, the starched wings of which fluttered in the wind, appeared at a distance like an immense winding-sheet hovering over the earth.
When the corpse reappeared, the prayers began again, and the sobs broke out anew, and could be heard through the dropping rain.
Not far from us, issued, at regular intervals, a sort of subdued gurgle that sounded like laughter.

In any other place, a person hearing it would have thought it the repressed explosion of some overwhelming joy or the paroxysm of a delirious happiness.

It was the widow, weeping.
Then she walked to the edge of the grave, as did the rest of the mourners, and little by little, the soil assumed its ordinary level and everybody went home.
As we walked down the cemetery steps, a young fellow passed us and said in French to a companion: "Heavens! didn't the fellow stink! He is almost completely mortified! It isn't surprising, though, after being in the water three weeks!" * * * * * One morning we started as on other mornings; we chose the same road, and passed the hedge of young elms and the sloping meadow where the day before we had seen a little girl chasing cattle to the drinking-trough; but it was the last day, and the last time perhaps, that we should pass that way.
A muddy stretch of land, into which we sank up to our ankles, extends from Carnac to the village of Po.

A boat was waiting for us; we entered it, and they hoisted the sail and pushed off.

Our sailor, an old man with a cheerful face, sat aft; he fastened a line to the gunwale and let his peaceful boat go its own way.