The Abbé Sérapion provided himself with a mattock, a lever, and a
lantern, and at midnight we wended our way to the cemetery of ------,
the location and place of which were perfectly familiar to him. After
having directed the rays of the dark lantern upon the inscriptions of
several tombs, we came at last upon a great slab, half concealed by
huge weeds and devoured by mosses and parasitic plants, whereupon we
deciphered the opening lines of the epitaph:

     Here lies Clarimonde
     Who was famed in her life-time
     As the fairest of women. *

          * Ici gît Clarimonde
          Qui fut de son vivant
          La plus belle du monde. The broken beauty of the lines is unavoidably
          lost in the translation. 'It is here without a doubt,' muttered Sérapion, and placing his lantern
on the ground, he forced the point of the lever under the edge of the
stone and commenced to raise it. The stone yielded, and he proceeded to
work with the mattock. Darker and more silent than the night itself, I
stood by and watched him do it, while he, bending over his dismal toil,
streamed with sweat, panted, and his hard-coming breath seemed to have
the harsh tone of a death rattle. It was a weird scene, and had any
persons from without beheld us, they would assuredly have taken us
rather for profane wretches and shroud-stealers than for priests of God. There was something grim and fierce in Sérapion's zeal which lent him
the air of a demon rather than of an apostle or an angel, and his great
aquiline face, with all its stern features, brought out in strong relief
by the lantern-light, had something fearsome in it which enhanced the
unpleasant fancy. I felt an icy sweat come out upon my forehead in huge
beads, and my hair stood up with a hideous fear. Within the depths of my
own heart I felt that the act of the austere Sérapion was an abominable
sacrilege; and I could have prayed that a triangle of fire would issue
from the entrails of the dark clouds, heavily rolling above us,
to reduce him to cinders. The owls which had been nestling in the
cypress-trees, startled by the gleam of the lantern, flew against it
from time to time, striking their dusty wings against its panes, and
uttering plaintive cries of lamentation; wild foxes yelped in the far
darkness, and a thousand sinister noises detached themselves from the
silence. At last Séra-pion's mattock struck the coffin itself, making
its planks re-echo with a deep sonorous sound, with that terrible sound
nothingness utters when stricken. He wrenched apart and tore up the
lid, and I beheld Clarimonde, pallid as a figure of marble, with hands
joined; her white winding-sheet made but one fold from her head to her
feet. A little crimson drop sparkled like a speck of dew at one corner
of her colourless mouth. Sérapion, at this spectacle, burst into fury:
'Ah, thou art here, demon! Impure courtesan! Drinker of blood and gold! 'And he flung holy water upon the corpse and the coffin, over which he
traced the sign of the cross with his sprinkler. Poor Clarimonde had
no sooner been touched by the blessed spray than her beautiful body
crumbled into dust, and became only a shapeless and frightful mass of
cinders and half-calcined bones. 'Behold your mistress, my Lord Romuald!' cried the inexorable priest, as
he pointed to these sad remains. 'Will you be easily tempted after this
to promenade on the Lido or at Fusina with your beauty?' I covered my
face with my hands, a vast ruin had taken place within me. I returned
to my presbytery, and the noble Lord Romuald, the lover of Clarimonde,
separated himself from the poor priest with whom he had kept such
strange company so long. But once only, the following night, I saw
Clarimonde. She said to me, as she had said the first time at the
portals of the church: 'Unhappy man! Unhappy man! What hast thou done? Wherefore have hearkened to that imbecile priest? Wert thou not happy? And what harm had I ever done thee that thou shouldst violate my poor
tomb, and lay bare the miseries of my nothingness? All communication
between our souls and our bodies is henceforth for ever broken. Adieu! Thou wilt yet regret me!' She vanished in air as smoke, and I never saw
her more. Alas! she spoke truly indeed. I have regretted her more than once, and I
regret her still. My soul's peace has been very dearly bought. The
love of God was not too much to replace such a love as hers. And this,
brother, is the story of my youth. Never gaze upon a woman, and walk
abroad only with eyes ever fixed upon the ground; for however chaste and
watchful one may be, the error of a single moment is enough to make one