"And shall we carry poor Massimo away thus?" asked Giovanni Vergas, trembling with horror.
"We shall bear him away the same as the others," said Doctor Karl von Ehbehard gloomily; "at dawn, when all the pleasure-seekers are sleeping, we shall carry him away on a simple bier, covered with a white cloth, and carried on the shoulders of two strong men, without any other funeral pomp, and we shall have to climb up through the wood from the Dorf, along steep and unknown paths, so that no one may meet us or see us, so there will only be us to accompany him, we who loved him and love the same things that he loved."
There was a lugubrious silence, and if the eyes of all those men were not shedding tears, weeping was within their desolate souls. Meanwhile two people entered quietly, approached the corpse, and contemplated it—Lucio Sabini and Lilian Temple. Lucio Sabini, too, had been warned to come and see the unfortunate man who had perished on high in a morning of the declining August, holding in his hands a bunch of flowers, and who had lain for hours at the foot of a precipice, and had been brought back on a bier of tree trunks, covered by the rough garments of the shepherds who had found him, to the bed where he had slept for twenty beautiful seasons amidst his mountains. Lucio promised to return, and had done so, accompanied by Lilian. The English girl was wearing a black dress and hat, and her pure, virginal face seemed whiter than ever, and more blond her soft hair. Side by side they gazed at the deformed face, with its pointed cheek-bones and large, pallid mouth, the face that had suffered so much and had never had peace and joy save amid the lofty peaks, near the sky, in silent, benignant solitude, amid the aroma of trees and the fragrance of leaves and flowers.
"Poor, poor Massimo," said Lucio, as if to himself.
"Do not weep for him," said the firm, soft voice of Lilian beside him, "you should not weep for him."
He questioned her with his glance.
"He died for his passion and his dream; we ought to envy him, and not weep for him," said the girl, seriously and sincerely.
She added no more. They had now joined the other five in a single group at the back of the death chamber.
Karl Ehbehard said to them:
"We will accompany him through the Waldpromenade, from St. Moritz Dorf towards Chassellas, to the cemetery of St. Moritz Bad, to the little solitary cemetery amidst the woods and meadows, beneath the gentle Suvretta, opposite the majestic Margna, in front of the lakes of Silvaplana and Sils. There we will bury him among the humble Engadiners, and among those strangers who come here from other countries to die, as he came."