A hand touched me and I drew aside to let a bent woman pass.

With her clenched fists on her breast, and face averted, she advanced without appearing to move her feet, eager to see, yet trembling to behold, and reached the row of lights which burned beside the bier.

Slowly, very slowly, lifting up her arm as if to hide herself under it, she turned her head on her shoulder and sank in a heap on a chair, as limp as her garments.
By the light of the candles, I could see her staring eyes, framed by lids that looked as if they had been scalded, so red were they; her idiotic and contracted mouth, trembling with despair, and her whole pitiful face, which was drenched with tears.
The corpse was that of her husband, who had been lost at sea; he had been washed ashore and was now being laid to rest.
The cemetery adjoined the church.

The mourners passed into it through a side-door, while the corpse was being nailed in its coffin, in the vestry.

A fine rain moistened the atmosphere; we felt cold; the earth was slippery and the grave-diggers who had not completed their task, found it hard to raise the heavy soil, for it stuck to their shovels.