"Why, I thought you were in China!"
"I have come back: those Chinamen put difficulties in my way at Canton, so I left them in the lurch."
While Baptiste was telling me of my triumphs, the passing-bell of a funeral called me to my window. The priest went by, preceded by the cross; men and women crowded after, the men in cloaks, the women in black gowns and mob-caps. The corpse, taken up at the third door from mine, was carried to the grave-yard: half-an-hour later, the procession-goers returned, minus the procession. Two young women held their handkerchiefs to their eyes, one of the two uttered loud cries: they were mourning their father; the deceased was the man who had received the Viaticum on the day of my arrival.
If my Memoirs reach Waldmünchen, when I myself am no more, the family in mourning to-day will find the date of its sorrow past. Perhaps, as he lay on his bed, the dying man heard the noise of my carriage: it is the only noise of me that he will have heard upon earth.
After the crowd had dispersed, I took the road which I had seen the funeral take in the direction of the winter sunrise. I found first a fish-pond of stagnant water, beside which a stream flowed rapidly, like life beside the tomb. Crosses on the other side of a rising ground showed me the position of the cemetery. I crossed a sunk road and made my way, through a gap in the wall, into the consecrated ground.
Clay furrows represented the bodies under the soil; here and there stood crosses: they marked outlets through which the travellers had entered the new world, even as beacons at the mouth of a river indicate the passages open to ships. A poor old man was digging the grave of a child: alone, perspiring and bare-headed, he did not sing, he did not jest like the clowns in Hamlet. Further away was another grave, near which one saw a stool, a lever and a rope for the descent into Eternity.
I went straight up to this grave, which seemed to say:
"Here is a fine opportunity!"
At the bottom of the hole lay the recent coffin, covered with a few shovelfuls of white dust, while awaiting the rest. A piece of linen was gleaming upon the grass: the dead took care of their shroud. Far from his country, the Christian has it always in his power suddenly to waft himself there; he has but to visit man's last resting-place around the churches: the cemetery is the family field and religion the universal mother-land.
It was noon when I returned; by every calculation, the express could not be back before three o'clock; nevertheless every stamping of horses made me run to the window: as the hour approached, I grew convinced that the permit would not come.