The meeting took place at the foot of the great staircase. Leaning
over the balustrade, I listened, and watched the colloquy of the
rival gods.
Monet was thirty years old; he had fine, sombre eyes, and a stiff
beard, from which a pipe emerged. Renaud carried the thin face of
a seminarist a little on one side.
Monet and Renaud listened gravely, as became people who were
deciding in the Name of the Father. Rashid was pleading for his
dead Arab with supple eloquence, wrapped in a cloud of tobacco-
smoke:
"We cannot leave the Arab's corpse under a wagon, in the storm.
... This man died for France, at his post. ... He had a right to
all honours, and it was hard enough as it was that he could not
have the obsequies he would surely have had in his own country."
Monet nodded approvingly, and Renaud, his mouth half open, was
seeking some formula.
It came, and this was it:
"Very well, Monsieur Rashid, take him into the church; that is
God's house for every one."
Rashid bowed with perfect deference, and went back to his dead.
Oh, he arranged everything very well! He had made this funeral a
personal matter. He was the family, the master of the ceremonies,
almost the priest.
The Algerian's body accordingly lay in the chapel, covered with
the old faded flag and a handful of chrysanthemums.
It was here the bearers came to take it, and carry it to
CONSECRATED GROUND, to lie among the other comrades.
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