One night he went out by stealth, crossed the market-place, and descended the hill. He had the look of a man who was hiding himself, and he went back several times, as if he was afraid of being followed. He reached the cemetery, took a key from his pocket, cautiously opened the gate and closed it behind him. At the bottom of the principal path there was a little chapel which served for an ossuary. In it was a hideous accumulation of the remains of several generations. The cemetery was becoming too full and it had been necessary to make room. Here as elsewhere the cry was: "Room for the young." And it is only justice. What would become of as if all the old remained? There is overcrowding under ground as there is above. "Keep off! Keep off!" Therefore their ancestors' bones were in the way, and they had cast them into this retreat to wait for the common grave. But the common grave is again a place which must be taken, and the recent gluttonous dead want everything. "Keep off! Keep off!" Let us not say anything ourselves, perhaps they will dispute with us the corner of ground which should shelter our bones!
Marcel went into the gloomy chapel; he lighted a dark lantern and began to search among the pile.
Then he returned to the parsonage like a thief, afraid of being caught, and shut himself up in his room.
He had a parcel under his arm; he opened it and, carefully placing its contents on the table, he sat down in front of it and contemplated it for a long time.
XXXIII.
FRENZY.
"Abstinence has its deadly exhaustions."
BALZAC (Le Lys dans la Vallée).
A few days before, the gravedigger, while digging up the whitened bones of the ancient dead, had broken up with his pick-axe a mouldering coffin, and a head rolled to his feet It was of later date, for the lower jaw was still fastened to it and it had not the calcareous colour of bones buried long ago. It was the more horrible.
The gravedigger threw it into his wheel-barrow with its neighbour's shin-bones, and carried it to the common heap. It was this thing that the Curé of Althausen had coveted and stolen.