The Argosy — page 83: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

68 All Souls Eve. marble that you may see your face in, and gold letters for the inscrip- tion. It must have cost money, though, that tablet.” The spoon had dropped into the arrowroot, and lay there. Babette’s voice fell to a still lower key. “She is going to church to-morrow night at seven, and when the candles are burnt out—she’s to have some dozens, they say, all alight together—she goes off straight to the cemetery, to pray over this new stone. She zs, Miss Clare.” | «But it is not the custom to pray in the cemetery to-morrow night,” _ debated the young lady, forgetting the spoon and the arrowroot. | ‘“‘ Never was yet,” responded Babette. ‘ But Madame lays his death — at her own door, and she thinks to expiate some of his time in pur- gatory, poor young gentleman, by praying-in the Day of the Dead. She’ll kneel in the cemetery until the clocks have told midnight.” «¢ All alone ?” shivered Clara. “Not she. Plenty of comméres wil! go with her for the novelty of the thing. I wouldn’t be one: and risk seeing his spirit—which is cer- | tain to appear. Do you notice how thin she’s got ?” | Clara replied by a faint moan. Her face was hidden in her hands. | “‘ She’s like a shadow, compared to what she was when Master Francis was at home; and as to her dead-and-alive old husband—— There's | your arrowroot all gone, Miss Clare!” screamed out Babette, by way — of conclusion. ‘And now you must begin some more! T’ll put on a handful of braises and get up the fire.” All Saints’ Day is the greatest religious féte, except Faster, in the Catholic calendar. The church decorations, the music, the rich robes | of the priests, and the brilliancy of the ladies’ toilets, are perfect on the féte of Toussaint. A strange contrast does the following day pre sent, All Souls’; or, as the French emphatically express it, the Jour des — Morts. ‘There are no gaudy colours in dress then; no decorations. The world attires itselfin sombre black ; the glittering tints in the priests’ robes _ are replaced by black and white; the church is hung with black, and — nothing meets the eye, inside it, but deaths’ heads, and cross-bones, and skulls elevated on poles ; whilst in the bowed, craped heads of the hushed congregation you behold real mourners. People in the large towns do not go to the cemetery, to kneel on the damp earth and pray, quite so — universally as they used ; but in the small rural communes, such as St. Eloi, none omitit. T he superstition, that the souls of the deceased come out of purgatory after dark on All Souls’ Eve and hover in the air, waiting to appear to any of their relatives who may venture abroad, is most religiously believed by the lower orders ; and by a good many of their betters also. The supposed object of their appearing is to. remind these their relatives to pray for them on the Jour des Morts: 2 and with the first glimmer of that sombre day’s dawn, the poor pa wing their flight back to purgatory. Gomicbooks.com