Doubtless they had often experienced trouble and had even wept at times,
but they had drawn closer together and consoled one another on such
occasions; none had ever been cut off from the good-night embraces which
healed every sore. And now the best was gone, death had come to say that
absolute joy existed for none, that the most valiant, the happiest; never
reaped the fulness of their hopes. There was no life without death. And
they paid their share of the debt of human wretchedness, paid it the more
dearly since they had made for themselves a larger sum of life. When
everything germinates and grows around one, when one has determined on
unreserved fruitfulness; on continuous creation and increase, how awful
is the recall to the ever-present dim abyss in which the world is
fashioned, on the day when misfortune falls, digs its first pit, and
carries off a loved one! It is like a sudden snapping, a rending of the
hopes which seemed to be endless, and a feeling of stupefaction comes at
the discovery that one cannot live and love forever!
Ah! how terrible were the two days that followed: the farm itself
lifeless, without sound save that of the breathing of the cattle, the
whole family gathered together, overcome by the cruel spell of waiting,
ever in tears while the poor corpse remained there under a harvest of
flowers.
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