"Requiescat in pace."
"Amen," responded the two boys.
Then the coffin was let down into the grave. The gravedigger had already slipped the ropes under it, and a couple of men amply sufficed to lower it, for the old man's corpse didn't weigh more that that of a little child. The funeral party now passed in procession in front of the grave, and the sprinkler again passed from hand to hand, every one shaking it crossways over the coffin.
Jean, who now stepped up, received the aspersorium from the hands of Monsieur Charles, and his eyes sought the bottom of the grave. He was rather dazzled, as he had gazed so long upon the far-stretching plain of La Beauce, watching the sowers as they sowed the bread of the future, from one end of the expanse to the other, and dwindled away in the suffused light of the vaporous horizon. However, down in the depths of the soil Jean could distinguish the coffin, looking still smaller than before, with its narrow lid of pale corn-yellow pinewood. The clods of rich earth were falling over it and gradually concealing it from view; and now there was only a pale glimmering patch to be seen, looking like a handful of the corn which the sowers were scattering in the furrows over yonder. He shook the sprinkler, and then handed it to Hyacinthe.
"Your reverence! your reverence!" Delhomme now called, running after the priest, who, as the service was over, was striding off with a furious gait, forgetting all about the boys.
"Well, what is it now?" asked the priest.
"I only wanted to thank you for your kindness in coming. I suppose we may have the bell rung for mass at ten o'clock on Sunday, as usual, eh?"
The priest looked at him keenly without making any reply, and Delhomme hastily added:
"By the way, there's a poor old woman who is very ill, and absolutely alone, and she hasn't got a farthing either—Rosalie, the chair-mender; you know her, don't you? I have sent her some food, but I can't do everything."