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'Stay indoors, and don't go out, he begged her, with clasped hands, one morning when he saw her still unrecovered from the fatigue of the previous day. 'You drive me to despair. But she hastened away in irritation. The garden, now that it rang with Albine's footfalls, seemed to have a more depressing influence than ever upon Serge.
Albine's head was cast back, her eyes were tightly closed, and she scarce drew her breath. Serge's caressing words enraptured her: 'Do you really, really love me? she murmured, without opening her eyes. Serge remained silent, sorely troubled that he could find nothing further to say to prove to her the force of his love.
And he breathed a kiss upon the hem of Albine's skirt. But at this the girl sprang up, as though it was she herself that had received the kiss. She hid her brow with her hands, perturbed, quivering, and stammering forth: 'Don't! don't! I beg of you. Let us go on.
'Ah! they've nearly finished over there, now! La Rousse whispered very softly. Abbe Mouret was just concluding the De profundis in front of Albine's grave. Then, with slow steps, he approached the coffin, drew himself up erect, and gazed at it for a moment without a quiver in his glance. He looked taller, his face shone with a serenity that seemed to transfigure him.
And, in spite of all his efforts to control his thoughts, he espied every tiny blade of grass that thrust itself up by Albine's skirts; he saw a little thistle-flower fastened in her hair, against which he remembered that he had pricked his lips.
And feeling that he was now invincible, so permeated with faith as to disdain temptation, he quitted the altar, took Albine's hand, and led her, as though she had been his sister, to the ghastly pictures of the Stations of the Cross. 'See, he said, 'this is what God suffered! Jesus is cruelly scourged. Look!
He still retained the ignorance of urchinhood his sense of touch as yet so innocent that he failed to tell Albine's gown from the covers of the old armchairs.
The flame of the lighted candle which he was carrying scarcely showed in the daylight. And behind him, almost touching him, came Albine's coffin, borne by four peasants on a sort of litter, painted black. The coffin was clumsily covered with too short a pall, and at the lower end of it the fresh deal of which it was made could be seen, with the heads of the nails sparkling with a steely glitter.
They did not kiss. But Serge, when he was alone, remained seated on the edge of his bed, listening to Albine's every movement in the room above. He was weary with happiness, a happiness that benumbed his limbs. For the next few days Albine and Serge experienced a feeling of embarrassment. They avoided all allusion to their walk beneath the trees.
Then, after an interval of silence, Jeanbernat slowly said: 'Well, was I not right? There is nothing, nothing, nothing. It is all mere nonsense. He remained standing and began to pick up the roses that had fallen from the bed, throwing them, one by one, upon Albine's skirts.
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