"CEMETERY VIEW INN"--"A queer sign,", said our traveller to himself;
"but it raises a thirst! Certainly the keeper of this inn appreciates
Horace and the poet pupils of Epicurus. Perhaps he even apprehends the
profound philosophy of those old Egyptians who had no feast without its
skeleton, or some emblem of life's brevity."
He entered: drank a glass of beer in presence of the tombs; and slowly
smoked a cigar. Then, his phantasy driving him, he went down into the
cemetery, where the grass was so tall and inviting; so brilliant in the
sunshine.
The light and heat, indeed, were so furiously intense that one had said
the drunken sun wallowed upon a carpet of flowers that had fattened
upon the corruption beneath.
The air was heavy with vivid rumours of life--the life of things
infinitely small--and broken at intervals by the crackling of shots
from a neighbouring shooting-range, that exploded with a sound as of
champagne corks to the burden of a hollow symphony.
And then, beneath a sun which scorched the brain, and in that
atmosphere charged with the ardent perfume of death, he heard a voice
whispering out of the tomb where he sat. And this voice said: "Accursed
be your rifles and targets, you turbulent living ones, who care so
little for the dead in their divine repose! Accursed be your ambitions
and calculations, importunate mortals who study the arts of slaughter
near the sanctuary of Death himself! Did you but know how easy the
prize to win, how facile the end to reach, and how all save Death is
naught, not so greatly would you fatigue yourselves, O ye laborious
alive; nor would you so often vex the slumber of them that long ago
reached the End--the only true end of life detestable!"