you have devised nothing better than to create an unhallowed portion in the field of eternal rest. The other day, when I went there to select a spot to my liking, did not a fool of a peasant say to me: 'You mustn't be buried there, Doctor, that corner is reserved for those condemned to death.' To be 'condemned to death' seemed to that idiot the utmost of horror. He does not realize that he—that they—that you—that we are all in the same case, my poor Abbé. Well, I chose my spot. I had a great stake driven there, so that there should be no mistake. Go and have a look at it, Abbé, for it is there that you will with pomp and ceremony, according to your rites, deposit me in unhallowed ground."

"That will never be, my dear Doctor."

"That will surely be, my dear Abbé."

A few months later, the doctor, after lying in wait for plovers on the Plain (it was Christmas Eve, and he was then more than eighty years old), returned home shivering with fever. A pleurisy set in on the following day, and soon death was rapidly nearing.

The Abbé was by his bedside, as will have been surmised. When he saw that there was no hope of recovery:

"Come, my dear friend," he began, having sent away the bystanders, "do you not think it fitting, in this hour, to speak seriously of serious things?"

"Hush," said the dying man, placing a thin, feverish finger on the priest's lips. "We have said all there was to be said, and there is nothing more to say. Take the key under my pillow—open that drawer—and give me my will—the drawer on the left—hand me also a pen—I wish to add a line."

The Abbé did as he was requested. The trembling hand wrote a few words, then the head fell back on the pillow. The old man was dying. An hour later Doctor Jean du Pouët had breathed his last.

The will when opened ran thus:

"I die in absolute unbelief, refusing to perform any act of faith. I bequeathe my fortune, which amounts approximately to 100,000 francs, to the church of Ecoulandres, for the purchase, under the direction of M. the Abbé Jaud, of ornaments of the cult, as sumptuous as the sum permits. This in the hope that the sight of such wealth in contrast with their own poverty will awaken appropriate sentiment in the souls of my fellow citizens. I desire to be buried in the unconsecrated part of the cemetery, in the spot where six months ago I caused a stake to be driven. If the Church should refuse me her prayers, the disposition above described will be held null and void. In that case I name as my sole legatee Toussaint Giraudeau, apothecary of Sainte Hermine, and President of the Masonic Lodge named 'Fraternity.' I desire him to distribute the inheritance as he shall think best among those Masonic activities most especially directed against superstition and mummery."

Under the signature were added these words:

"I shall be dead within the hour. Nothing to change," and the name, in a large, shaky handwriting, which, by the emphasis of the downward stroke told, however, of an inflexible will.

The Abbé Jaud's first impulse was one of haughty refusal, but his second was to go and consult his bishop, who made clear to him that highest duty lay in presenting every obstacle to Free Masonry. He was obliged to obey. The doctor in his grave had the last word, his face twisted with sardonic laughter under the holy water sprinkled by the discomfited Abbé.

The infants born before their time who filled in the cemetery of Ecoulandres, "the corner reserved for those condemned to death," gained this much by the event, that the earth they lay in was blessed. In that respect, at least, one of the doctor's predictions was unfulfilled.

But the Abbé's real revenge, although he was perhaps unaware of it, was that the sight of the magnificent golden chalices and monstrances ornamented with precious stones, far from arousing rebellion in the hearts of the poor, as the doctor had intended, only increased the fervour of the faithful, and provoked the piety of the indifferent by wonder at the splendour in which the power of the Invisible revealed itself. Victory and defeat on both sides. Blows struck in the darkness of the Unknown. And so passes the life of man.

III

MALUS VICINUS

Saint-juirs is the name of a village in the canton of Sainte Hermine. Lying on the slope of a hill, it overlooks a fresh, grassy valley planted with poplars and watered by a brook which has no recorded name. A very modest Romanesque church laboriously hoists skyward a heavy stone belfry amid a clump of elm and nut trees. The ruins of an old castle degenerated from the dignity of a stronghold to the simple rank of a country residence testifies that here, possibly, some notable event may have taken place. But as the inhabitants have forgotten it, and have no care to search it out, they live in absolute indifference to a thing that is not their direct business. Their village appears to them like all other villages, their church, their houses, their fields, their beasts, like all other churches and houses and fields and beasts. They only vaguely take in the idea of other countries on the earth. The newspapers tell them of unknown lands and of strange doings; it all seems to belong to some other world. What does it matter to them, anyhow, since they have no intention of ever stirring, and since nothing will ever happen to them? For them the past is without interest, and the future does not mar the peace of their slumbers. The present means the crops, the flocks, and the weather. For the things of Heaven there is the curé, for the things of earth there are the mayor, the notary, the customs officer, and the tax collector: a simplification of life.

Markets and fairs purvey to the restless cravings of such as are curious about outside happenings, but no inhabitant of Saint-Juirs would entertain the absurd idea that any trace of an event worth relating was to be found in his own village. Love itself is without drama, owing to the lack of stiffness in rustic morals, which precludes excesses of imagination by reducing to the proportions of newspaper items the conjunctions natural to our kind. There are, doubtless, disputes in Saint-Juirs as elsewhere, in connection with property rights, for "thine" and "mine," which are the foundation of "social order," are likewise a permanent cause of disorder among men. Trespassing in a pasture, the use of a well, a right of way, the branch of a tree reaching beyond a line, a hedge encroaching upon a ditch, result in quarrels, lawsuits, and dissension in families, the importance of which is no less to the small townspeople than was the feud between Capulets and Montagues to Verona. Centuries pass, the man of the past and the man of to-day meet on common ground in displaying the same old violence, to which sometimes even the excuse of interests involved is wanting, as happened when Benvolio drew his sword upon a burgher of Verona who had taken the liberty to cough in the street, and thereby waked his dog asleep in the sunshine.

The peaceful inhabitant of Saint-Juirs is a stranger to such vagaries. Yet a Latin inscription above a door on the church square testifies to the fact that a local scholar took to heart those neighbourly quarrels to the point of wishing to leave some memory of them to posterity. A plain stone door-frame gives access to a little garden surrounded by high walls. Behind box hedges a house may be seen, rather broad than high, built apparently as far back as the last century, and looking much like other houses of the period. A servant comes out carrying a laundry basket. A woman is sewing at the window. The door closes again. Nothing more. Mechanically the eye travels back to the cracked stone whereon stands deeply engraved the following wise epigraph: "Malus vicinus est grande malum."

I have often passed by, and while freely granting that a bad neighbour is indeed a great evil, have always wondered what epic strife was recorded by this dolorous