It was from such a source that the pretty story entitled “Fin du Marquisat d’Aurel” was taken, written by Henri de la Madeleine, and telling of a noble family fallen to the plebeian class.
As I said, my uncle was an idle fellow. Often about the middle of the day, when he should have been digging or forking in the garden, he would fling aside his tools, and retiring to the shade, draw out his flute and start a rigaudon. At the sound of music, the girls at work in the neighbouring fields would come running, and forthwith he would play a sauterelle and start them all dancing.
In winter he seldom got up before midday.
“Where can one be so snug, so warm, as in one’s bed?” he laughed.
And when we asked if he did not get bored staying in bed, his reply was:
“Not I! When I am sleepy I sleep, and when I am not, I say psalms for the dead.”
Curiously enough, this light-hearted son of Provence never missed a funeral, and the service over, he was always the last to leave the cemetery, remaining behind that he might pray for his own family and for others. Then, resuming his old gaiety, he would observe:
“Another one gone—carried into the city of Saint Repose!”
In his turn he had also to go there. He was eighty-three and the doctor had told his family there was nothing more to be done.
“Bah,” answered, Bénoni, “what’s the good of worrying. It is the sickest man that will die first.”