Page:Hardy - Jude the Obscure, 1896.djvu/112

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He likewise heard some phrases spoken by the phantom with the short face, the genial Spectator:

"When I look upon the tombs of the great, every motion of envy dies in me, when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tombs of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow."

And, lastly, a gentle-voiced prelate spoke, during whose meek, familiar rhyme, endeared to him from earliest childhood, Jude fell asleep:

"Teach me to live, that I may dread
The grave as little as my bed.
Teach me to die..."

He did not wake till morning. The ghostly past seemed to have gone, and everything spoke of to-day. He started up in bed, thinking he had overslept himself, and then said:

"By Jove—I had quite forgotten my sweet-faced cousin, and that she's here all the time!... and my old school-master, too." His words about his school-master had, perhaps, less zest in them than his words concerning his cousin.