"And to show that the story is true, there were found the marks of flames on the white fence of the Calvaire the next day; and as often as they painted it over with whitewash, still the darkness of the scorched wood would show through, as I often saw for myself; but now there is a new fence there...."
[LA ROSE WITNESSETH]
Of How Old Siméon's Son Came Home Again
In the old cemetery above the church some men were at work setting up a rather ornate monument at the head of two long-neglected and overgrown graves. La Rose had noticed what was going on, as she came out from early mass, and had informed herself about it; and since then, she said, all through the day, her thoughts had been traveling back to things that happened many years ago.
"Is it not strange," she observed musingly, sitting about dusk with Michel on the doorsill of the kitchen, while Céleste finished the putting-away of the supper dishes—"is it not strange how things go in this world? So often they turn out sorrowfully, and you cannot understand why that should be so. Think of that poor Léonie Gilet, who was taken so suddenly in the chest last winter and died all in a month, and she one of the purest and sweetest lilies that ever existed, and the next year she was to be married to a good man that loved her better than both his two eyes. Ah, mon Dieu, sometimes I think the sadness comes much more often than the joy down here."
She looked out broodingly, and with eyes that did not see anything, across the captain's garden and the hayfield below, dipping gently to the margin of the harbor. Michel was silent. La Rose's fits of melancholy interested him even when he only dimly sensed the burden of them.
"And then," she resumed, after a moment, "sometimes the ending to things is happy. For a while all looks dark, dark, and there is grief, perhaps, and some tears; and then, just at the worst moment—tiens!—there is a change, and the happiness comes again, very likely even greater than it was at first. It is as if this good God up there, he could not bear any longer to see it so heartbreaking, and so he must take things into his own hands and set them right. And so, sometimes, when I find myself feeling sad about things, I like to remember what arrived to that poor Siméon Leblanc, whose son is just having them place a fine tombstone for him up there in the cimetière; for if ever happiness came to any man, it came to him, and that after a long time of griefs. Did you ever hear about this old Siméon Leblanc?"