village a new colour. Weary with running and entreating, the priest
had sat down in the snow in front of the church; and his servant-maid
stood near him, looking around. They saw the street and the orchard
filled with peasants in their holiday attire, moving about the
market-place and along the houses. Outside the doors, families, with
their dead children on their knees, whispered in amazement and horror
of the fate wherewith they had been assailed. Others were still
mourning the child where it had fallen, near a cask, under a barrow or
at a puddle's edge, or were carrying it away in silence. Several were
already washing the benches, chairs, tables and shirts all smirched
with blood and picking up the cradles that had been flung into the
street. But nearly all the mothers were kneeling on the grass under
the trees, before the dead bodies, which they knew by their woollen
frocks. Those who had no children were roaming about the market-place,
stopping to gaze at the afflicted groups. The men who had done weeping
took the dogs and started in pursuit of their strayed beasts, or
mended their broken windows or gaping roofs, while the village grew
hushed and still beneath the light of the moon as it rose slowly in
the sky.
THE END
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes
The following typographical errors have been corrected from the
original book:
Page 083: inquity changed to iniquity
(example of iniquity would strike the ideals of mankind)
Page 113: magnificnt " " magnificent
(rejuvenated by our magnificent misfortune,)
Page 126: alwas " " always
(and always ready with his pleasant smile,)
Page 174: man " " men
("So died these men as became Athenians.)
Page 178: centuies " " centuries
(These words spoken twenty-three centuries ago)
Page 183: catacylsm " " cataclysm
(if this cataclysm let loose by an act of unutterable)
Page 232: sorsow " " sorrow
(Alas, yes! I had heard of your sorrow;)
Page 236: Then " " They
(They need love as much as do the living.)
Page 247: (section number) 2 " " 3
(3 All these, on examination, leave but a worthless residuum;)
Page 305: Breughel " " Brueghel
(painted in the sixteenth century by Pieter Brueghel the Elder.)
Page 327: missing ending quotes were added
("You may save your tears! It is not my fault!")
Other spelling variations, for example, Renascence (pg. 64) and
behoves (pg. 119), have been retained.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Wrack of the Storm, by Maurice Maeterlinck