d only one mourner in the twelve first? It
was so droll we all noticed it--"

"Monsieur, take care, Monsieur Desmarets is with me; he might hear you,
and what you say is not seemly."

"I beg pardon, monsieur! you are quite right. Excuse me, I took you for
heirs. Monsieur," he continued, after consulting a plan of the cemetery,
"Madame Jules is in the rue Marechal Lefebre, alley No. 4, between
Mademoiselle Raucourt, of the Comedie-Francaise, and Monsieur
Moreau-Malvin, a butcher, for whom a handsome tomb in white marble has
been ordered, which will be one of the finest in the cemetery--"

"Monsieur," said Jacquet, interrupting him, "that does not help us."

"True," said the official, looking round him. "Jean," he cried, to a man
whom he saw at a little distance, "conduct these gentlemen to the
grave of Madame Jules Desmarets, the broker's wife. You know where it
is,--near to Mademoiselle Raucourt, the tomb where there's a bust."

The two friends followed the guide; but they did not reach the steep
path which leads to the upper part of the cemetery without having
to pass through a score of proposals and requests, made, with honied
softness, by the touts of marble-workers, iron-founders, and monumental
sculptors.

"If monsieur would like to order _something_, we would do it on the most
reasonable terms."

Jacquet was fortunate enough to be able to spare his friend the hearing
of these proposals so agonizing to bleeding hearts; and presently they
reached the resting-place. When Jules beheld the earth so recently dug,
into which the masons had stuck stakes to mark the place for the stone
posts required to support the iron railing, he turned, and leaned upon
Jacquet's shoulder, raising himself now and again to cast long glances
at the clay mound where he was forced to leave the remains of the being
in and by whom he still lived.

"How miserably she lies there!" he said.

"But she is not there," said Jacquet, "she is in your memory. Come, let
us go; let us leave this odious cemetery, where the dead are adorned
like women for a ball."

"Suppose we take her away?"

"Can it be done?"

"All things can be done!" cried Jules. "So, I shall lie there," he
added, after a pause. "There is room enough."

Jacquet finally succeeded in getting him to leave the great enclosure,
divided like a chessboard by iron railings and elegant compartments, in
which were tombs decorated with palms, inscriptions, and tears as cold
as the