.

That room, in which so many ambitions had felt their wings expand, in
which so many hopes and disappointments had had their day, was given
over to the tranquillity of death. Not a sound, not a sigh. But, early
as it was, over in the direction of Pont de la Concorde, a shrill,
piercing little clarinet soared above the rumbling of the first
carriages; but its vigorous mockery was wasted thenceforth upon the man
who lay sleeping there, revealing to the terrified Nabob the image of
his own destiny, cold, discolored, ready for the grave.

Others than Jansoulet saw that death-chamber under even more dismal
circumstances. The windows thrown wide open. The night air from the
garden entering freely in a brisk current. A form upon trestles; that
form, the body just embalmed. The head hollowed out, filled with a
sponge, the brain in a bucket. The weight of that statesman's brain was
really extraordinary. It weighed--it weighed--The newspapers of the day
gave the figures. But who remembers them to-day?

XIX.

THE OBSEQUIES.

"Don't weep, my fairy; you take away all my courage. Come, you will be
much happier when you no longer have your horrible demon. You are going
back to Fontainebleau to tend your hens. Brahim's ten thousand francs
will be enough to give you a start. And after that have no fear; when I
am once there, I'll send you money. As this bey wants some of my
sculpture, I shall make him pay well for it, be sure of that. I shall
return rich, rich. Who knows? Perhaps a sultana?"

"Yes, you will be a sultana,--but I shall be dead, and I shall never see
you again."

And honest Crenmitz in her despair huddled in a corner of the cab, so
that her companion might not see her weep.

Felicia was leaving Paris. She was trying to escape the horrible
melancholy, the ominous heart-sickness in which Mora's death had plunged
her. What a terrible blow for the haughty girl! Ennui, spite had driven
her into that man's arms; pride, modesty, she had given all to him, and
now he had carried it all away, leaving her withered for life, a widow
without tears, without mourning, without dignity. Two or three visits to
Saint-James, a few evenings in the back of a box at some small theatre,
behind the grating where forbidden, shamefaced pleasure conceals
itself,--those were the only memories bequeathed to her by that liaison
of two weeks, that loveless sin, wherein not even her pride had
succeeded in satisfying itself by the notor