You and I have belonged to each
other since time began, through hundreds of earth-lives perhaps, and
thousands of vicissitudes: always finding one another again. A little
while ago, a cloud came between us, and it seemed as if we might be
swept away from one another; but it passed, and we found each other and
ourselves, in the light, far above cloudline. That's why I say, nothing
can part us now, not even death. And as for this tablet of two parted
lovers, it wasn't put up to commemorate their sorrows, but their
happiness; and so it can bring us only happiness."
"Look!" Mary exclaimed, standing back a little from the mule path which
descended there, and pressing closer under the rock of the tablet.
Winding down the path came a little procession, a few peasants
bareheaded, dressed in black, clean and piteous in their neatness. The
women were silently crying, tears wet on their brown cheeks, their eyes
red. The men, two who were old and two who were young, carried a very
small, roughly made bier, on which was a tiny coffin almost covered with
flowers, and wild, scented herbs of the mountains. Their thick boots
clattered on the cobblestones, but they made no other sound, and none
raised their eyes as they went by. It was as if the lovers were
invisible to them, as though they were of a different order of being
which the sad eyes were not fitted to see.
As the procession defiled upon the main road, at the foot of the mule
path it paused a moment. Though the mourners did not see him, Vanno took
off his hat and stood with it held rather high above his head, in his
right hand, as is the custom with all Latin men for the passing of a
funeral.
Pages:
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439