‘Monsieur, please to tell me what happens when people die.’
‘Ma foi, there is nothing more about them,’ cried the tutor.
‘And what are those who do not die supposed to do?’
‘To moderate their feelings,—and go to sleep.’
‘But I cannot sleep, Monsieur. I am very unhappy. Oh, I wish it had been the count. Why doesn’t God kill wicked persons? Is it wicked to wish the count to be dead, Monsieur?’
‘Very.’
‘Then I must be dreadfully wicked, for I would like to kill him myself, if I were big and strong.’
At breakfast next day, he asked if people did not wear very black clothes when their friends died, and indited a curious epistle to his father, begging permission to wear the deepest mourning for the lady he was to have married. Vested in black, his little mouse-coloured head looked more pitiful and vague than ever, as he sat out the long funeral service in the church of Saint-Gervais, and lost himself in endless efforts to count the candles, and understand what the strange catafalque and velvet pall in the middle of the church meant, and what had become of the countess.
After the burial his tutor took him to the cemetery. The bereaved child carried a big wreath to lay upon the grave of his departed lady-love. Kneeling there, upon the same mission, was M. le Comte, shedding copious tears, and apostrophising the dead he had made it a point to wound in life. Hervé knelt opposite him, and stared at him indignantly. Why should he cry? The countess had not loved him, nor had he loved the countess. The boy flung himself down on the soft earth, and began to sob bitterly. The thought that he would never again see his lost friend took full possession of him for the first time, and he wanted to die himself. Disturbed by this passionate outbreak, the count rose, brushed the earth from his new trousers with a mourning pocket-handkerchief already drenched with his tears, and proceeded to lift Hervé.
‘The dear defunct was much attached to you, little marquis,’ he said, and began to wipe away Hervé’s tears with the handkerchief made sacred by his own. ‘You were like a son to her.’