The avenue crossed the country road by which I had come, and no doubt ended in a terrace, for at its extremity I could perceive nothing more of the near landscape, but only the slope of the distant mountain on the border of the valley. The road crossed the Cernay property, one of those expropriations, no doubt, which make no account of the decorative value of private estates. The peasant indicated the direction by a gesture. “Over there.” At the entrance of this part of the avenue were two granite columns, once evidently intended as supports for an iron chain, which, rusty and disused, was lying on the ground between them. I remounted my machine and urged it on over the rustling leaves. There were so many that I sank among them, and needed to take care not to be tripped up. Beyond the last two oaks I found, as I had expected, a terrace, from which, as from a balcony, one overlooked the deep valley. A pool in the hollow reflected the light of day, doubling the glory of the landscape, its banks of serried reeds, so close as to conceal their separate pliancy, forming a long golden barrier. This was what I saw at first, as from a window one first sees the opposite distance and later takes in the nearer features of the scene. When I looked closer I perceived beside me on the right a chapel, and on the left, against a hillock, the little graveyard for which I was looking. What a charming, sunny little graveyard it was! Girdled with a newly whitewashed wall, overrun with wild plants, it had the look rather of a deserted garden patch than of a cemetery. Here and there a cross pierced the thick green, making itself the trellis for some shrub. The lovely coral clusters hanging from one or two roan trees achieved an aspect almost of gaiety for the little enclosure. Sloping gently and with a fine exposure it seemed quite literally a tiny garden plot. It invited to terrestrial rest, not the eternal repose of death. No idea of the end of things was in this place. I wanted to sun myself on the wall there like a lizard, and had to resist the temptation. I entered, and before I realised it was searching for the grave of some one I hardly knew. The monument of the Allignys, crenelated like a fortress and crowned with a truncated pillar, first caught my eye. Happily the passing of this ancient family had given nature and the audacious weeds an opportunity to make successful headway against man’s domination. No other monument looked down upon these flower beds. Was the millionaire Cernay, noted for his love of pomp, so neglectful of his wife’s memory? No--at last a very simple tombstone, hardly higher than the weeds, showed me an inscription, though I could read it only by raising the ivy beneath which it lay half hidden: RAYMONDE CERNAT BORN MAIRIEUX TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OLD.