Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/247



HEY buried her at midnight with the horrible, selfish haste of the country's habits and laws in death.

The day before she had been alive; a woman, shrewd, brave, wise, and faithful in her own rude way, boiling the soup in her pot, cutting the canes for her mule, looking at the sea and the sun, giving good-day to her neighbours from her house-door; and now she was thrown into a hole of the earth, and the earth was cast in upon her, and she was nothing—nothing;—less than the fish that died in the nets on the shore, for they could be sold, and so were of value.

To the living, human beings are cruel very often; but to the dead they are always brutal, be the dead, pauper or king.