while christine remained locked in her room, raoul was at his wit's end what to do.he refused to breakfast.he was terribly concerned and bitterly grieved to see the hours, which he had hoped to find so sweet, slip past without the presence of the young swedish girl.
why did she not come to roam with him through the country where they had so many memories in common? he heard that she had had a mass said, that morning, for the repose of her father's soul and spent a long time praying in the little church and on the fiddler's tomb.
then, as she seemed to have nothing more to do at perros and, in fact, was doing nothing there, why did she not go back to paris at once?
raoul walked away, dejectedly, to the graveyard in which the church stood and was indeed alone among the tombs, reading the inscriptions;but, when he turned behind the apse, he was suddenly struck by the dazzling note of the flowers that straggled over the white ground.
they were marvelous red roses that had blossomed in the morning, in the snow, giving a glimpse of life among the dead, for death was all around him.it also, like the flowers, issued from the ground, which had flung back a number of its corpses.skeletons and skulls by the hundred were heaped against the wall of the church, held in position by a wire that left the whole gruesome stack visible.
dead men's bones, arranged in rows, like bricks, to form the first course upon which the walls of the sacristy had been built.
the door of the sacristy opened in the middle of that bony structure, as is often seen in old breton churches.
raoul said a prayer for daae and then, painfully impressed by all those eternal smiles on the mouths of skulls, he climbed the slope and sat down on the edge of the heath overlooking the sea.
the wind fell with the evening.raoul was surrounded by icy darkness, but he did not feel the cold.it was here, he remembered, that he used to come with little christine to see the korrigans dance at the rising of the moon.he had never seen any, though his eyes were good, whereas christine, who was a little shortsighted, pretended that she had seen many.he smiled at the thought and then suddenly gave a start.a voice behind him said: