"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!"