Ignoring the dreaded telegram, Jean and Mimi left the cool shadows of the house for the cheery brightness of sun-swept Dumaine Street. Oblivious of passersby, answering salutations and the greetings of friends methodically, they walked slowly through the streets, down the Esplanade, on and on until they found themselves at the gates of St. Louis cemetery. Yet in silence they wandered through the confused, close-packed vieux carré of the dead, past tombs piled one upon the other, their walls lined with row upon row of ghostly storehouses, “the ovens” like those of a baker-shop, each large enough only to hold a coffin. Crumbling bricks, covered with vines within which scampered in the dazzling, warming sunlight lizards of green or of gold. Here and there the Ci-git and the Ici Repos and the names, birth and death dates of those buried within had been eaten away by countless storms of rain and sunlight until none could tell who had been buried there.
“It’s just as well,” thought Jean. “If there are those, relative or friend, who yet remain alive, they know which tomb holds their friends. And if there are none left—what difference does it make? Silly curiosity-seekers who ramble through a place like this as they would a penny arcade during Mardi Gras seeking new thrills—what do their wishes count?”
Their reveries were unbroken until they heard a noise behind them. From beyond a pile of “ovens” a silver crucifix flashed in the sunlight, raised high above the tombs. Soon the cortége appeared, winding its slow way through the tortuous maze of irregularly built tombs, the “Chant for the Dead” rolling out on the still air in lugubrious and chilling melody, rising or dropping as the tombs opened or closed in about the procession. Here and there, where the turning of a passage was too narrow to permit the carrying of the casket at its usual height, Jean and Mimi saw it raised high on a level with the crucifix. They stood hand in hand until the chanting died down in the distance.