Guy de Maupassant complete short stories volume 2 - Penn State ...

“Next, St. Lucia killed, one after the other, his uncle’s accusers,
and tore out their eyes to teach the others never to state
what they had seen with their eyes.
“He killed all the relatives, all the connections of his enemy’s
family. He slew during his life fourteen gendarmes, burned down
the houses of his adversaries, and was, up to the day of his death,
the most terrible of all the bandits whose memory we have preserved.”
The sun disappeared behind Monte Cinto and the tall shadow
of the granite mountain went to sleep on the granite of the
valley. We quickened our pace in order to reach before night
the little village of Albertaccio, nothing but a pile of stones
welded into the stone flanks of a wild gorge. And I said as I
thought of the bandit:
“What a terrible custom your vendetta is!”
My companion answered with an air of resignation:
“What would you have? A man must do his duty!”
Guy de Maupassant
411
THE THE GRA GRAVE GRA VE
The seventeenth of July, one thousand eight hundred and
eighty-three, at half-past two in the morning, the watchman in
the cemetery of Besiers, who lived in a small cottage on the
edge of this field of the dead, was awakened by the barking of
his dog, which was shut up in the kitchen.
Going down quickly, he saw the animal sniffing at the crack
of the door and barking furiously, as if some tramp had been
sneaking about the house. The keeper, Vincent, therefore took
his gun and went out.
His dog, preceding him, at once ran in the direction of the
Avenue General Bonnet, stopping short at the monument of
Madame Tomoiseau.
The keeper, advancing cautiously, soon saw a faint light on
the side of the Avenue Malenvers, and stealing in among the
graves, he came upon a horrible act of profanation.
A man had dug up the coffin of a young woman who had been
buried the evening before and was dragging the corpse out of it.
A small dark lantern, standing on a pile of earth, lighted up
this hideous scene.