"You came to see these graves?" remarked my friend. "They are
interesting places to ponder and dream over."

"Not to see these, though, did I come," I replied.

We soon came to the graves of nobility. There was the tomb of a
Noailles, a Grammont, a Montagu. Plain, all of them, and yet with an air
at once chaste and artistic. There was the tomb of Rosambo and Lemoignon
amid the tangled grass. All of these names were once noble and great in
France, and as I bent over them, I could but call up France in the days
of the _ancien regime_, when all these names called forth bows and
fawnings from the people. Dead and buried nobility--what is it? The
nobility goes--names die with the body.

"You came out to see buried nobility," said my companion.

"Me! Did I ever go out of my way to see even buried _royalty_? Never,
unless the ashes had been something more than a mere king. To see the
grave of genius or goodness, but not empty, buried names!"

We went on a little farther--to a quiet spot, where the sun shone in
warmly, where the grass was mown away short, but where it was green and
bright. The song of a plaintive bird just touched our ears--where it was
we could not tell, only we heard it. It was a still, beautiful spot,
and there was a grave before us--yet how very plain! A pure, white
marble, a simple tomb.

Now my companion asked no questions, but I saw that his lips quivered.
The name on the simple tomb was that of