n the gods gave me five minutes alone with Lucille
herself--

"You must not," she said, her face drawn and white, her lips
quivering, "you must not let mother think that this is more than I can
bear. It falls heavier upon her."

I blundered on somehow during those two days, making, no doubt, a
hundred mistakes; for what comfort could I offer? What pretence could
I make to understand the feelings of these ladies? My task was not so
difficult as I had anticipated in regard to the grim coffin lying at
Passy. To spare the other, both ladies agreed with me separately that
the Vicomte should be buried from Passy as quietly as possible, and
Lucille overlooked the fact that the suggestion came from such an
unwelcome source as myself.

So, amid the wild excitement of July, 1870, we laid Charles Albert
Malaunay, Vicomte de Clericy, to rest among his ancestors in the
little church of Senneville, near Nevers. The war fever was at its
height, and all France convulsed with passionate hatred for the
Prussian.

It is not for one who has found his truest friends--ay, and his
keenest enemies--in France to say aught against so great and gifted a
people. But it seems, as I look back now, that the French were ripe in
1870 for one of those strokes by which High Heaven teaches nations
from time to time through the world's history that human greatness is
a small affair.

There are no people so tolerant of folly as the Parisians. It walks
abroad in the streets of the great city with such unblushing
self-satisfaction--such a brazen sense of its own superiority--that
any Englishman must long to import a hundred London street boys, with
their sense of ridicule and fearless tongue. At all times the world
has possessed an army of geniuses whose greatness consists of faith
and not of works--of faith in themselves which takes the outward form
of weird clothing, long hair, and a literary or artistic pose. Paris
streets were so full of such in 1870 that all thoughtful men could
scarce fail to recognise a nation in its decadence.

"The asses preponderate in the streets," said John Turner to me. "You
may hear their bray in every cafe, and France is going to the devil."

And indeed the voices raised in the drinking dens were those of the
fool and the knave.

I busied myself with looking into the money affairs of my poor patron,
and found them in great disorder. All the ready cash had fallen into
the hands of Miste. Some of the estates, as, indee