相思夢裏

It was finished at last. When the last oration had been delivered, the King solemnly approached the bier on which the body lay, and kissed Vasile’s lips. The bandits, one by one, followed his example. I shivered at the thought that my turn was coming. I tried to hide behind two who had already performed their duty, but they saw me and said: “It is your turn! Start then! You certainly owe him that!”

Was this, at last, the expiation which awaited me? A just man would have been satisfied, at least. I swear to you, Monsieur, that it is no child’s play to kiss the lips of a corpse, above all, when one can reproach one’s self with being the instrument of his death. I walked toward the bier, I looked at the face whose eyes seemed to laugh . I bent my head, I slightly touched the lips. A humorous brigand applied his hand to the nape of my neck. My mouth struck the cold lips! I felt the icy teeth, and seized with horror, I raised my head, carrying away with me I know not what terror of death, which seizes me at this moment! Women are very fortunate, they have the resource of fainting!

They then lowered the body into the earth, they threw in a handful of flowers, a loaf of bread, an apple, and a little wine. This latter was the thing of which he had the least need. The grave was quickly filled, more quickly than I wished. A brigand observed that they must get two sticks for a cross. Hadgi-Stavros replied: “Be quiet! we will put up milord’s sticks.” I leave it to you to think whether my heart beat tumultuously. What sticks? What was there in common between sticks and me　I was convinced that he was hungry, that if I could find enough to surfeit him.?

The King made a sign to his pipe-bearer, who ran to the office and came back with two long laurel poles. Hadgi-Stavros took the funeral bier and laid it upon the grave. He pressed it down hard into the freshly turned earth, and he raised it up at one end, while the other lay in the soil, and he smilingly said to me: “It is for you that I am working! Take off your shoes, if you please!He must have read in my eyes a question full of agony and terror, for he replied to the demand which I dared not address to him:

“I am not wicked, and I have always detested useless severity. That is why I wish to inflict on you a chastisement which will be of use to us, inasmuch as it will dispense with any future watchfulness over you. You have had for several days a craze to escape. I hope, that when you have received twenty blows of the stick upon the soles of your feet, you will no longer need to be watched, and your love for traveling will cease for some time. I know what the punishment is; the Turks treated me to a dose of it in my youth, and I know, by experience, that one does not die of it. One suffers much from it; you will cry out, I warn you of it. Vasile will hear from the depths of his tomb, and he will be pleased with us.