“This you must see,” said the Commissaire, ducking his head and leading us into a small passageway between two brick walls. “It is the most interesting person in Zandt. She is eighty-three years old. She lost her only grandson in the war. She has nothing to eat except from her little garden. There, see!”
We had emerged on the edge of a tiny plot of land, perhaps twenty-two feet square. A gray one-story cottage, covered with mossy thatch, bounded it on one side; low walls and an outhouse inclosed it on the others. The little plot was cultivated, densely, compactly, expertly—a mosaic of fruits and green vegetables. Two apricot trees trimmed in the French fashion were trained along the wall, and a low vine, with some sort of pendent fruit, hung from the outhouse.
But strangest of all there were three beds of ornamental flowers. I stared hard at them, and suddenly I saw that they were graves!
“Good-day, madame,” the Commissaire called, touching his hat. “See, these are American gentlemen come to look at your little garden.”
She came slowly from the cottage, a wisp of lace in her white hair, wearing the ceremonial black frock which a peasant woman puts on for such feast days as the Feast of the Assumption, a white apron, and leather shoes. “You are welcome, gentlemen, you are welcome,” she said, with the grace of a chatelaine.
“But aren’t those graves?” I asked, pointing to the beds of nasturtiums, geraniums, and marigolds which covered three long mounds at the end of the garden, taking up almost half of the room available for vegetables and fruits. “Madame, aren’t those graves?”
“Oh, yes, mynheer,” she said.