instance, the Shepherdess all but followed
him to the tomb, so violent and sincere was her grief, but--next morning
there was green peas at lunch, she was fond of green peas, the delicious
green peas calmed the crisis. Her daughters and her servants loved her
so blindly that the whole household rejoiced over a circumstance that
enabled them to hide the dolorous spectacle of the funeral from the
sorrowing Baroness. Isaure and Malvina would not allow their idolized
mother to see their tears.

"While the Requiem was chanted, they diverted her thoughts to the choice
of mourning dresses. While the coffin was placed in the huge, black and
white, wax-besprinkled catafalque that does duty for some three
thousand dead in the course of its career--so I was informed by a
philosophically-minded mute whom I once consulted on a point over a
couple of glasses of _petit blanc_--while an indifferent priest mumbling
the office for the dead, do you know what the friends of the departed
were saying as, all dressed in black from head to foot, they sat or
stood in the church? (Here is the picture you ordered.) Stay, do you see
them?

"'How much do you suppose old d'Aldrigger will leave?' Desroches asked
of Taillefer.--You remember Taillefer that gave us the finest orgy ever
known not long before he died?"

"He was in treaty for practice in 1822," said Couture. "It was a bold
thing to do, for he was the son of a poor clerk who never made more than
eighteen hundred francs a year, and his mother sold stamped paper. But
he worked very hard from 1818 to 1822. He was Derville's fourth clerk
when he came; and in 1819 he was second!"

"Desroches?"

"Yes. Desroches, like the rest of us, once groveled in the poverty of
Job. He grew so tired of wearing coats too tight and sleeves too short
for him, that he swallowed down the law in desperation and had just
bought a bare license. He was a licensed attorney, without a penny, or a
client, or any friends beyond our set; and he was bound to pay interest
on the purchase-money and the cautionary deposit besides."

"He used to make me feel as if I had met a tiger escaped from the Jardin
des Plantes," said Couture. "He was lean and red-haired, his eyes were
the color of Spanish snuff, and his complexion was harsh. He looked cold
and phlegmatic. He was hard upon the widow, pitiless to the orphan,
and a terror to his clerks; they were not allowed to waste a minute.
Learned, crafty, double-faced, honey-ton