"If monsieur would like to order _something_, we would do it on the
most reasonable terms."
Jacquet was fortunate enough to be able to spare his friend the
hearing of these proposals so agonizing to bleeding hearts; and
presently they reached the resting-place. When Jules beheld the earth
so recently dug, into which the masons had stuck stakes to mark the
place for the stone posts required to support the iron railing, he
turned, and leaned upon Jacquet's shoulder, raising himself now and
again to cast long glances at the clay mound where he was forced to
leave the remains of the being in and by whom he still lived.
"How miserably she lies there!" he said.
"But she is not there," said Jacquet, "she is in your memory. Come,
let us go; let us leave this odious cemetery, where the dead are
adorned like women for a ball."
"Suppose we take her away?"
"Can it be done?"
"All things can be done!" cried Jules. "So, I shall lie there," he
added, after a pause. "There is room enough."
Jacquet finally succeeded in getting him to leave the great enclosure,
divided like a chessboard by iron railings and elegant compartments,
in which were tombs decorated with palms, inscriptions, and tears as
cold as the stones on which sorrowing hearts had caused to be carved
their regrets and coats of arms. Many good words are there engraved in
black letters, epigrams reproving the curious, _concetti_, wittily
turned farewells, rendezvous given at which only one side appears,
pretentious biographies, glitter, rubbish and tinsel.
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