A silence which the jailer could not understand prevailed in the cell. The two men and the woman looked at each other with a strange understanding and eloquence in the eyes of all.
The jailer, very anxious to make favor for himself, continued:
“If you will come with me to the cell that the dead man occupied, I will show you his handwriting on the wall.”
Still silent, the Bishop walking heavily, they went down the corridor, and the jailer opened the door of the cell, large and with many windows, and swung the lantern so that its yellow gleam fell upon the whitewashed wall.
The Bishop read the first two lines, and then his voice broke. Neither Diane nor Jean took up the reading.
The jailer, still obsequious, chattered on.
“He was the coolest hand I ever saw, and making jokes until the very last, complaining that he would catch cold if he didn’t wear his hat on the way to be shot. He was very proud of his poetry, and complained only that he had not time to finish the last verse.”
The Bishop, a man of simple mind, went down on his knees, and Diane and Jean knelt, too. So did the jailer, who did not mind a little thing like that in order to keep the good-will of his recent prisoners.
The Bishop made a prayer for the soul of François, known as Le Bourgeois, a prayer that came from the heart of an honest man.
“Now we know that François, whom the world reckoned a rapscallion, was a better man than most. He stood up against the wall, and was huddled into the trench in my place, not so much for my sake as for this woman, whom, I know now, he loved well.”
“Is he then buried in the trench?” asked the Bishop. “He must be taken out this night and given Christian burial.”
A heavy silence had fallen over the quarter where lately there had been the shrieking of bullets and the thunder of guns. Still the city was burning and shrouded in smoke, but the Commune was throttled and dead.
In finding François, everything was done quite as informally as shooting him. The Bishop stood by the trench in the darkness, which was lighted only by the jailer’s lantern.
The trench was the last one dug by the Communards, and was so hastily filled that the dirt was easily thrown aside by a couple of soldiers hired to do the work, Jean helping with a spade. They lifted François out, looking strangely young and natural when the canvas in which his body was wrapped was removed.