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Selected Writings-Part16_Guy De Maupassant(1850-1893)_Translated Works(翻译文学)-第2页

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Sapeur, in a contemptuous tone.

"We carried her into the room, and as the women did not put in an



appearance, I, with the assistance of the lad, dressed the corpse

for burial.



"I washed her disfigured face. By the touch of my hand an eye was

slightly opened; it seemed to scan me with that pale stare, with



that cold, that terrible look which corpses have, a look which

seems to come from the beyond. I plaited up, as well as I could,



her disheveled hair, and I adjusted on her forehead a novel and

singularly formed lock. Then I took off her dripping wet



garments, baring, not without a feeling of shame, as though I had

been guilty of some profanation, her shoulders and her chest, and



her long arms, slim as the twigs of branches.

"I next went to fetch some flowers, corn poppies, blue beetles,



marguerites, and fresh and perfumed herbs, with which to strew

her funeral couch.



"Being the only person near her, it was necessary for me to

perform the usual ceremonies. In a letter found in her pocket,



written at the last moment, she asked that her body be buried in

the village in which she had passed the last days of her life. A



frightful thought then oppressed my heart. Was it not on my

account that she wished to be laid at rest in this place?



"Toward the evening, all the female gossips of the locality came

to view the remains of the defunct; but I would not allow a



single person to enter; I wanted to be alone; and I watched by

the corpse the whole night.



"By the flickering light of the candles, I looked at the body of

this miserable woman, wholly unknown, who had died so lamentably



and so far away from home. Had she left no friends, no relatives

behind her? What had her infancy been? What had been her life?



Whence had she come thither, all alone, a wanderer, like a dog

driven from home? What secrets of suffering and of despair were



sealed up in that disagreeable body, in that spent and withered

body, that impenetrable hiding place of a mystery which had



driven her far away from affection and from love?

"How many unhappy beings there are! I felt that upon that human



creature weighed the eternalinjustice of implacable nature! Life

was over with her, without her ever having experienced, perhaps,



that which sustains the most miserable of us all--to wit, the

hope of being once loved! Otherwise, why should she thus have



concealed herself, have fled from the face of others? Why did she

love everything so tenderly and so passionately, everything



living that was not a man?

"I recognized, also, that she believed in a God, and that she



hoped for compensation from him for the miseries she had endured.

She had now begun to decompose, and to become, in turn, a plant.



She who had blossomed in the sun was now to be eaten up by the

cattle, carried away in herbs, and in the flesh of beasts, again



to become human flesh. But that which is called the soul had been

extinguished at the bottom of the dark well. She suffered no



longer. She had changed her life for that of others yet to be

born.



"Hours passed away in this silent and sinistercommunion with the

dead. A pale light at length announced the dawn of a new day, and



a bright ray glistened on the bed, shedding a dash of fire on the

bedclothes and on her hands. This was the hour she had so much



loved, when the waking birds began to sing in the trees.

"I opened the window to its fullest extent, I drew back the



curtains, so that the whole heavens might look in upon us. Then

bending toward the glassycorpse, I took in my hands the



mutilated head, and slowly, without terror or disgust, imprinted

a long, long kiss upon those lips which had never before received



the salute of love."

* * * * * * *



Leon Chenal remained silent. The women wept. We heard on the box

seat Count d'Etraille blow his nose, from time to time. The



coachman alone had gone to sleep. The horses, which felt no

longer the sting of the whip, had slackened their pace and



dragged softly along. And the four-in-hand, hardly moving at all,

became suddenly torpid, as if laden with sorrow.



THE HOLE




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