Little Poems in Prose

the rattle of the shots of a neighboring gallery, which burst like the explosion of champagne corks amid the murmur of a muffled sym- phony. Then, under the sun which warmed his brain and in the atmosphere of the burning perfumes of death, he heard a voice whisper beneath the tomb where he was seated, and this voice said, “Accursed be your targets and your guns, ye noisy folk that are alive, who care so little for the dead and their divine rest! Accursed be your ambitions, accursed be your calculations, impatient mortals, who come to study the art of slaying so close to the sanctu- ary of death! If you knew how easy the prize was to gain, how easy the mark was to hit, and how all is nothing except death, you would not take so much trouble, O toilsome folk that are alive, and you would trouble less often the slumber of those who long since have hit the mark, the sole true mark of detestable life.”