"We followed the hearse in the mud. The church was new, damp and poor. Aside from two or three people, relatives struck down by a dull sorrow, everyone had just one idea: to find some pretext to get away. Those who went as far as the cemetery were those who did not find an excuse. I see the gray walls and the cypresses, those trees of sun and shade, so beautiful in the country of southern France against the low purple hills. I see the horrible undertaker's men in greasy jackets and shiny top hats. I see.... No, I'll stop; it's too horrible. "Near the wall, in a remote plot, a grave had been dug in frightful yellow pebbly clay. It was there that they left the dead man whose name I no longer remember. "While they were lowering the casket, I looked at my hands, those hands which in that strangely lighted country had pressed the hands of Antinea. A great pity for my body seized me, a great fear of what threatened it in these cities of mud. 'So,' I said to myself, 'it may be that this body, this dear body, will come to such an end! No, no, my body, precious above all other treasures, I swear to you that I will spare you that ignominy; you shall not rot under a registered number in the filth of a suburban cemetery. Your brothers in love, the fifty knights of orichalch, await you, mute and grave, in the red marble hall. I shall take you back to them.' "A _mysterious love_. Shame to him who retails the secrets of his loves. The Sahara lays its impassable barrier about Antinea; that is why the most unreasonable requirements of this woman are, in reality, more modest and chaste than your marriage will be, with its vulgar public show, the bans, the invitations, the announcements telling an evil-minded and joking people that after such and such an hour, on such and such a day, you will have the right to violate your little tupenny virgin.