All things that we love and cherish,
Like ourselves must fade and perish.
Such is our rude mortal lot:
Love itself would, did they not----'
As she passed through the gateway she put her arm through Andrea's and
shivered.
The cemetery was solitary and deserted. A few gardeners were engaged in
watering the plants along by the wall, swinging their watering-cans
from side to side with an even and continuous motion and in silence.
The funeral cypresses stood up straight and motionless in the air; only
their tops, gilded by the sun, trembled lightly. Between the rigid,
greenish-black trunks rose the white tombs--square slabs of stone,
broken pillars, urns, sarcophagi. From the sombre mass of the cypresses
fell a mysterious shadow, a religious peace, a sort of human kindness,
as limpid and beneficent waters gush from the hard rock. The unchanging
regularity of the trees and the chastened whiteness of the sepulchral
monuments affected the spirit with a sense of solemn and sweet repose.
But between the stiff ranks of the trees, standing in line like the deep
pipes of an organ, and interspersed among the tombs, graceful oleanders
swayed their tufts of pink blossom; roses dropped their petals at every
light touch of the breeze, strewing the ground with their fragrant snow;
the eucalyptus shook its pale tresses--now dark, now silvery white;
willows wept over the crosses and crowns; and, here and there, the
cactus displayed the glory of its white blooms like a swarm of sleeping
butterflies or an aigrette of wonderful feathers.
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