The rector of the
parish, however, refused to receive her into the church or to pray for
her. Ida Gruget was therefore wrapped in a shroud by an old
peasant-woman, put into a common pine-coffin, and carried to the
village cemetery by four men, followed by a few inquisitive
peasant-women, who talked about the death with wonder mingled with
some pity.
The widow Gruget was charitably taken in by an old lady who prevented
her from following the sad procession of her daughter's funeral. A man
of triple functions, the bell-ringer, beadle, and grave-digger of the
parish, had dug a grave in the half-acre cemetery behind the church,
--a church well known, a classic church, with a square tower and
pointed roof covered with slate, supported on the outside by strong
corner buttresses. Behind the apse of the chancel, lay the cemetery,
enclosed with a dilapidated wall,--a little field full of hillocks;
no marble monuments, no visitors, but surely in every furrow, tears
and true regrets, which were lacking to Ida Gruget. She was cast into
a corner full of tall grass and brambles. After the coffin had been
laid in this field, so poetic in its simplicity, the grave-digger
found himself alone, for night was coming on. While filling the grave,
he stopped now and then to gaze over the wall along the road. He was
standing thus, resting on his spade, and looking at the Seine, which
had brought him the body.
"Poor girl!" cried the voice of a man who suddenly appeared.
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