mpany, monumental stone-masons;
Sir Walter Scott would have dubbed me _Young Mortality_," continued this
person. "If you, sir, should decide to intrust your orders to us,
we would spare you the trouble of the journey to purchase the ground
necessary for the interment of a friend lost to the arts--"

At this Remonencq nodded assent, and jogged Schmucke's elbow.

"Every day we receive orders from families to arrange all formalities,"
continued he of the black coat, thus encouraged by Remonencq. "In the
first moment of bereavement, the heir-at-law finds it very difficult to
attend to such matters, and we are accustomed to perform these little
services for our clients. Our charges, sir, are on a fixed scale, so
much per foot, freestone or marble. Family vaults a specialty.--We
undertake everything at the most moderate prices. Our firm executed the
magnificent monument erected to the fair Esther Gobseck and Lucien de
Rubempre, one of the finest ornaments of Pere-Lachaise. We only
employ the best workmen, and I must warn you, sir, against small
contractors--who turn out nothing but trash," he added, seeing that
another person in a black suit was coming up to say a word for another
firm of marble-workers.

It is often said that "death is the end of a journey," but the aptness
of the simile is realized most fully in Paris. Any arrival, especially
of a person of condition, upon the "dark brink," is hailed in much the
same way as the traveler recently landed is hailed by hotel touts
and pestered with their recommendations. With the exception of a few
philosophically-minded persons, or here and there a family secure
of handing down a name to posterity, nobody thinks beforehand of the
practical aspects of death. Death always comes before he is expected;
and, from a sentiment easy to understand, the heirs usually act as if
the event were impossible. For which reason, almost every one that loses
father or mother, wife or child, is immediately beset by scouts that
profit by the confusion caused by grief to snare others. In former days,
agents for monuments used to live round about the famous cemetery of
Pere-Lachaise, and were gathered together in a single thoroughfare,
which should by rights have been called the Street of Tombs; issuing
thence, they fell upon the relatives of the dead as they came from the
cemetery, or even at the grave-side. But competition and the spirit
of speculation induced them to spread themselves further an