XXVI
THE SECRET OF THE TAPESTRY
That evening, at eight o'clock, Jean Labrouk was buried. A
shell had burst not a dozen paces from his own door, within the
consecrated ground of the cathedral, and in a hole it had made he
was laid, the only mourners his wife and his grandfather, and two
soldiers of his company sent by General Bougainville to bury him.
I watched the ceremony from my loft, which had one small dormer
window. It was dark, but burning buildings in the Lower Town made
all light about the place. I could hear the grandfather mumbling
and talking to the body as it was lowered into the ground. While
yet the priest was hastily reading prayers, a dusty horseman came
riding to the grave, and dismounted.
"Jean," he said, looking at the grave, "Jean Labrouk, a man dies
well that dies with his gaiters on, aho! ... What have you said
for Jean Labrouk, m'sieu'?" he added to the priest.
The priest stared at him, as though he had presumed.
"Well?" said Gabord. "Well?"
The priest answered nothing, but prepared to go, whispering a
word of comfort to the poor wife. Gabord looked at the soldiers,
looked at the wife, at the priest, then spread out his legs and
stuck his hands down into his pockets, while his horse rubbed its
nose against his shoulder. He fixed his eyes on the grave, and
nodded once or twice musingly.
"Well," he said at last, as if he had found a perfect virtue,
and the one or only thing that could be said, "well, he never
eat his words, that Jean.
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