verage duration, distressed him as being of ill
omen. But, when he encountered those of the dead who were notable for
the length of their years, he joyfully drew from them the hope and
probability of a long lease of life.

The hearse stopped in the middle of a side alley. The clergy and the
women stepped out of the coaches. Delage received in his arms, from the
top of the carriage steps, the worthy Madame Ravaud, who was getting a
little ponderous, and of a sudden, half in jest, half in earnest, he
made certain proposals to her. She was no longer young, having been on
the stage for half a century. Delage, with his twenty-five years, looked
upon her as prodigiously old. Yet, as he whispered into her ear, he felt
excited, infatuated, he became sincere, he really desired her, out of
perverse curiosity, because he wanted to do something extraordinary, and
was certain that he would be able to do it, perhaps because of his
professional instinct as a handsome youth, and, lastly, because, in the
first place having asked for what he did not want, he began to want what
he had asked for. Madame Ravaud, indignant but flattered, made good her
escape.

The coffin was carried along a narrow path bordered with dwarf
cypresses, amid a murmuring of prayers:

_"In paradisum deducant te Angeli, in tuo adventu susciptant te Martyres
et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Jerusalem, Chorus Angelorum te
suscipiat et cum Lazaro, quondam paupere, aeternam habeas requiem."_

Soon there was no longer any visible path. It was necessary, in
following the quickly vanishing coffin, the priests and the choristers,
to scatter, striding over the recumbent tombstones, and slipping between
the broken columns and upright slabs. They lost the coffin and found it
again. Nanteuil evinced a certain eagerness in her pursuit of it,
anxious and abrupt, her prayer-book in her hand, freeing her skirt as it
caught on the railings, and brushing past the withered wreaths which
left the heads of immortelles adhering to her gown. Finally, the first
to reach the graveside smelt the acrid odour of the freshly turned soil,
and from the heights of the neighbouring flagstones saw the grave into
which the coffin was being lowered.

The actors had contributed liberally to the expenses of the funeral;
they had clubbed together to buy for their comrade as much earth as he
needed, two metres granted for five years. Romilly, on behalf of the
actors of the Odeon, had paid the ce