moved off.

When we came out of the church it was not far off four o'clock. The
rain had not stopped and little rivers dashed down from either side of
the procession's sluggish flow along the street. There were many
flowers, so that the hearse made a blot of relief, beautiful enough.
There were many people, too, and I turned round several times. Always
I saw old Eudo, in his black cowl, hopping along in the mud,
hunchbacked as a crow. Marie was walking among some women in the
second half of the file, whose frail and streaming roof the hearse drew
along irregularly with jerks and halts. Her gait was jaded; she was
thinking only of our sorrow! All things darkened again to my eyes in
the ugliness of the evening.

The cemetery is full of mud under the muslin of fallen rain, and the
footfalls make a sticky sound in it. There are a few trees, naked and
paralyzed. The sky is marshy and sprinkled with crows.

The coffin, with its shapeless human form, is lowered from the hearse
and disappears in the fresh earth.

They march past. Marie and her father take their places beside me. I
say thanks to every one in the same tone; they are all like each other,
with their gestures of impotence, their dejected faces, the words they
get ready and pour out as they pass before me, and their dark costume.
No one has come from the castle, but in spite of that there are many
people and they all converge upon me. I pluck up courage.

Monsieur Lucien Gozlan comes forward, calls me "my dear sir," and
brings me the condolences of his uncles, while the rest watch us.