The Chevalier's daughter

by Lucy Ellen Guernsey

"Yes, you would like them as sour as last year's cider," retorted Julienne. "Mamselle Grace was not a skinflint, whatever else she was."

"What will you do about the funeral?" asked Andrew of my father. "Shall you send to Granville or Avranches for an undertaker?"

"No indeed!" answered my father. "I have given special orders to the servants not to say a word about poor Grace's death. It would be sure to bring down upon us a visitation. Mathew is making her a coffin now, and we must place the body in the vault beneath the chapel, as soon as may be—this very night, if possible. There she may perhaps rest in peace. I would not, if I could help it, have my poor old friend's body thrown out into a ditch like a dead dog."

"They would not dare to do it," said Andrew, aghast.

"They would be sure to do it," was my father's answer. "Things have not improved since the Duke of Guise kicked the dead face of brave old Coligny. If it were only the dead who were warred upon, it would not be so much matter."

"And yet somehow an insult to the dead seems baser and more cowardly than one offered to the living," said Andrew thoughtfully. "Many a rude fellow who would knock a man down as soon as look at him, as we say, would be horrified at any rough treatment of a corpse. Why is it?"

"Partly, perhaps, from superstition, but more from an idea that the dead are helpless to defend themselves," answered my father. "If a man have any manhood in him, his heart will be touched by the plea of helplessness. It is only when men are turned into demons by war or cruelty or lust that they will disregard the plea of helplessness."

That very night at midnight, the corpse of our good old friend was conveyed down to the vault, beneath the ruined chapel, and built into one of the niches of the wall with some of the rough stones which lay loose about the floor. I had never been in the vault before, and my father cautioned me to beware how I stepped. The floor was of the natural rock, rough and uneven, and in some places were deep cracks from which issued a solemn roaring sound, now loud, now faint and almost dying away. By one of the niches I have mentioned which surrounded the vault, and which were like small chambers hewn in the rock, was placed a little pile of building materials. In this chamber was placed the body of our good old friend.

My father read from my mother's prayer-book the funeral service of the Church of England, so solemn, touching, and comforting. Then the vault was built up with stones taken from the floor, and carefully daubed with mould and slime, to look as much like the rest of the wall as possible. It was a dreary funeral enough, but not so sad as was many another in these sad days, when many a dutiful child had to look on and see the body of a father or mother dragged away on a hurdle and cast into a bog or buried in a dunghill.