ir urns in the procession at
Longchamps. And if the urns were valuable, they were likely some day
to be sold at auction, full of respectable ashes, or seized by
creditors,--a race of men who respected nothing. The other side made
answer that our ancestors were much safer in urns than at Pere-Lachaise,
for before very long the city of Paris would be compelled to order a
Saint-Bartholomew against its dead, who were invading the neighboring
country, and threatening to invade the territory of Brie. It was, in
short, one of those futile but witty discussions which sometimes cause
deep and painful wounds. Happily for Jules, he knew nothing of the
conversations, the witty speeches, and arguments which his sorrow had
furnished to the tongues of Paris.

The prefect of police was indignant that Monsieur Jacquet had appealed
to a minister to avoid the wise delays of the commissioners of the
public highways; for the exhumation of Madame Jules was a question
belonging to that department. The police bureau was doing its best to
reply promptly to the petition; one appeal was quite sufficient to set
the office in motion, and once in motion matters would go far. But as
for the administration, that might take the case before the Council of
state,--a machine very difficult indeed to move.

After the second day Jacquet was obliged to tell his friend that he must
renounce his desire, because, in a city where the number of tears shed
on black draperies is tariffed, where the laws recognize seven classes
of funerals, where the scrap of ground to hold the dead is sold at its
weight in silver, where grief is worked for what it is worth, where the
prayers of the Church are costly, and the vestry claim payment for extra
voices in the _Dies irae_,--all attempt to get out of the rut prescribed
by the authorities for sorrow is useless and impossible.

"It would have been to me," said Jules, "a comfort in my misery. I meant
to have died away from here, and I hoped to hold her in my arms in a
distant grave. I did not know that bureaucracy could send its claws into
our very coffins."

He now wished to see if room had been left for him beside his wife. The
two friends went to the cemetery. When they reached it they found (as
at the doors of museums, galleries, and coach-offices) _ciceroni_, who
proposed to guide them through the labyrinth of Pere-Lachaise. Neither
Jules nor Jacquet could have found the spot where Clemence lay. Ah,
frightful anguish!