like marble and sand-paper. He had no collection of suitable epitaphs,
and, besides, he did not know whether it was right to use them. Like all
his race in New France he was jealous of any inroads of Protestantism,
or what the Little Chemist called "Englishness." The good M. Fabre,
the Cure, saw no harm in it, but said he could not speak for any one's
grief. What the bereaved folk felt they themselves must put in words
upon the stone. But still Francois might bring all the epitaphs to him
before they were carved, and he would approve or disapprove, correct or
reject, as the case might be.

At first he rejected many, for they were mostly conventional couplets,
taken unknowingly from Protestant sources by mourning Catholics. But
presently all that was changed, and the Cure one day had laid before him
three epitaphs, each of which left his hand unrevised and untouched; and
when he passed them back to Francois his eyes were moist, for he was a
man truly after God's own heart, and full of humanity.

"Will you read them to me, Francois?" he said, as the worker in stone
was about to put the paper back in his pocket. "Give the names of the
dead at the same time."

So Francois read:

"Gustave Narrois, aged seventy-two years-"

"Yes, yes," interrupted the Cure, "the unhappy yet happy Gustave, hung by
the English, and cut down just in time to save him--an innocent man. For
thirty years my sexton. God rest his soul! Well now, the epitaph."

Francois read it: