Page:Gilbert Parker--The Lane that had No Turning.djvu/154

138 could not speak for any one’s grief. What the bereaved folk felt they themselves must put in words upon the stone. But still François might bring all the epitaphs to him before they were carved, and he would approve or disapprove, correct or reject, as the case might be.

At first he rejected many, for they were mostly conventional couplets, taken unknowingly from Protestant sources by mourning Catholics. But presently all that was changed, and the Curé one day had laid before him three epitaphs, each of which left his hand unrevised and untouched; and when he passed them back to François his eyes were moist, for he was a man truly after God’s own heart, and full of humanity.

"Will you read them to me, François?" he said, as the worker in stone was about to put the paper back in his pocket. "Give the names of the dead at the same time."

So François read:

"Gustave Narrois, aged seventy-two years"

"Yes, yes," interrupted the Curé, "the unhappy yet happy Gustave, hung by the English, and cut down just in time to save him—an innocent man. For thirty years my sexton. God rest his soul! Well now, the epitaph."

François read it:

The Curé nodded his head. "Go on; the next," he said.