XXXII.
Away in Paris, a vast concourse of people were assembled round an
open grave in Pere-la-Chaise, wherein the plain coffin of the Abbe
Vergniaud had just been lowered. The day was misty and cold, and the
sun shone fitfully through the wreaths of thin vapour that hung over
the city, occasionally gleaming on the pale fine face of the famous
"Gys Grandit", who, standing at the edge of the grave spoke his
oration over the dead.
"To this, to this," he cried, "oh people of Paris, we all must come!
Our ambitions, our hopes, our dreams, our grand reforms, our loves
and joys end here, so far as this world is concerned! He whom we
have just laid in the earth was skilled in many devious ways of
learning,--gifted with eloquence, great in scholarship, quick with
the tongue as with the pen, he was a man whom perchance all France
would have called famous had it not been for me! I am the blot on my
father's name! I am the sin for which he has made the last
expiation! People of Paris, for years he lived and worked among
you,--outwardly smiling, witty of speech and popular with you all,--
but inwardly a misery to himself in his own conscience, because he
knew his life was not what he professed it to be.
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