296 THE LIVING AND THE DEAD. 
While making this reflection, we had finished climbing the hill; we 
stood in front of the tomb. And there, with admiration, with a species 
of astonishment, I found a surprising contradiction of what I had just 
been saying. . 
About a score of very brilliant bees hovered above the little garden- 
plot——which was narrow as a shroud, stripped of bloom and bare of 
flowers, and saddened by the influence of the season. In the whole 
cemetery remained only the last autumnal flowers,—some withering 
and half-leafless Bengal roses. The spot where we stood, full of new 
buildings, masonry, and plaster, was an Arabia Deserta. Finally, on 
the tomb, towards the head of the grandfather, flourished only a few 
sickly white asters, and over my child the cypresses. It must needs 
have been that these asters, in their cold clayey soil, nourished either 
by the whispers of the air or the spirits of the earth, treasured up 
a modicum of honey, since the little gleaners resorted thither for their 
harvest. 
I am not superstitious. I believe in but one miracle, the constant 
miracle of the Providence of Nature. I experienced nevertheless how 
powerfully the mind may be affected by a lively surprise of the heart. 
I felt an emotion of gratefulness at the sight of the mysterious little 
creatures animating this solitude, whither, alas! I myself came but 
rarely. The increasing absorption of my work, in which day pressed 
upon day,—the palpitating flame of the forge where one forges more 
and more quickly, in the doubt whether one will be living to-morrow,— 
all this kept us further from the tombs than in the days of our dreamy 
youth. I was much affected by seeing my place supplied. In my 
absence the bees peopled and vivified the spot, consoled, and perhaps 
rejoiced my dead. My father may have smiled on them in his kindly 
indulgence ; they may have been the happiness and first delight of my 
child. 
Selfish motives could not have led them thither; there was so little 
for them to take. Nevertheless, when we suspended to the cypress- 
boughs the garlands of ymmortelles we had brought with us, they were 
curious enough to ascertain if there was any treasure in the new 
