ned to it, probing the sore, trying to find the gash by
which life had fled, while his tears, mingled with blood, flowed freely,
and stained the statue's gaping wounds with red.

'Do help me!' he gasped. 'One can't leave her like this.'

Claude was overcome also, and his own eyes grew moist from a feeling
of artistic brotherliness. He hastened to his comrade's aide, but the
sculptor, after claiming his assistance, persisted in picking up the
remains by himself, as if dreading the rough handling of anybody else.
He slowly crawled about on his knees, took up the fragments one by
one, and put them together on a board. The figure soon lay there in its
entirety, as if it had been one of those girls who, committing suicide
from love, throw themselves from some monument and are shattered
by their fall, and put together again, looking both grotesque and
lamentable, to be carried to the Morgue. Mahoudeau, seated on the floor
before his statue, did not take his eyes from it, but became absorbed in
heart-rending contemplation. However, his sobs subsided, and at last
he said with a long-drawn sigh: 'I shall have to model her lying down!
There's no other way! Ah, my poor old woman, I had such trouble to set
her on her legs, and I thought her so grand like that!'

But all at once Claude grew uneasy. What about his wedding? Mahoudeau
must change his clothes. As he had no other frock-coat than the one he
was wearing, he was obliged to make a jacket do. Then, the figure having
been covered with linen wraps once more, like a corpse over which a
sheet has been pulled, they both started off at a run. The stove was
roaring away, the thaw filled the whole studio with water, and slush
streamed from the old dust-begrimed plaster casts.

When they reached the Rue de Douai there was no one there except little
Jacques, in charge of the doorkeeper. Christine, tired of waiting, had
just started off with the three others, thinking that there had been
some mistake--that Claude might have told her that he would go straight
to the mayor's offices with Mahoudeau. The pair fell into a sharp trot,
but only overtook Christine and their comrades in the Rue Drouot in
front of the municipal edifice. They all went upstairs together, and
as they were late they met with a very cool reception from the usher on
duty. The wedding was got over in a few minutes, in a perfectly empty
room. The mayor mumbled on, and the bride and bridegroom curtly uttered
the bindin