"It is this, monsieur." He spoke rapidly, lest his courage should go.
"That terrible train, with its brute of iron and live coals and foul
smoke and screeching throat, has awakened my dead. I guarded them with
holy-water and they heard it not, until one night when I missed--I was
with madame as the train shrieked by shaking the nails out of the
coffins. I hurried back, but the mischief was done, the dead were awake,
the dear sleep of eternity was shattered. They thought it was the last
trump and wondered why they still were in their graves. But they talked
together and it was not so bad at the first. But now they are frantic.
They are in hell, and I have come to beseech you to see that they are
moved far up on the hill. Ah, think, think, monsieur, what it is to have
the last long sleep of the grave so rudely disturbed--the sleep for
which we live and endure so patiently!"

He stopped abruptly and caught his breath. The count had listened
without change of countenance, convinced that he was facing a madman.
But the farce wearied him, and involuntarily his hand had moved towards
a bell on the table.

"Ah, monsieur, not yet! not yet!" panted the priest. "It is of the
countess I came to speak. I had forgotten. She told me she wished to lie
there and listen to the train go by to Paris, so I sprinkled no
holy-water on her grave. But she, too, is wretched and horror-stricken,
monsieur. She moans and screams. Her coffin is new and strong, and I
cannot hear her words, but I have heard those frightful sounds from her
grave to-night, monsieur; I swear it on the cross. Ah, monsieur, thou
dost believe me at last!"

For the count, as white as the woman had been in her coffin, and shaking
from head to foot, had staggered from his chair and was staring at the