L'Isle translated it:
Our bones, which here are resting
Are expecting yours.
"God forbid that mine should find so gloomy a resting place,"
exclaimed Mrs. Shortridge, with a shudder.
"It is a weakness," said Lady Mabel; "yet we must shrink from this
promiscuous mingling of our ashes, and are even choice in the
selection of our last resting place. We hope even in death to rejoin
our kindred dust in the ancestral vault, or at least to repose under
some sunny spot, in the churchyard hallowed to us in life. Is not this
your feeling?" she said, appealing to L'Isle.
L'Isle looked grave. "It is a natural feeling clinging to our mortal
nature, and doubtless has its use. But I must not indulge it. The
soldier is even less at liberty than other men to choose his own
grave. The fosse of a beleaguered fortress, a shallow trench in a
well-fought field, the ravine of a disputed mountain pass, the strand
of some river to be crossed in the face of the enemy--all these have
furnished, and will furnish graves for those who fall, and have the
luck to find burial; the wolf and the vulture provide for the rest. We
have a wide graveyard," he added, more cheerfully, "stretching from
hence to the Pyrenees, and, perchance, beyond them.
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