e next world."

Thus chatting, the two young men entered the Rue de l'Arbre Sec and
proceeded toward the sign of the _Belle Etoile_, which was still
creaking in the same place, still presenting to the traveller its
astronomic hearth and its appetizing inscription. Coconnas and La Mole
expected to find the house in a desperate state, the widow in mourning,
and the little ones wearing crepe on their arms; but to their great
astonishment they found the house in full swing of activity, Madame La
Huriere mightily resplendent, and the children gayer than ever.

"Oh, the faithless creature!" cried La Mole; "she must have married
again."

Then addressing the new Artemise:

"Madame," said he, "we are two gentlemen, acquaintances of poor Monsieur
La Huriere. We left here two horses and two portmanteaus which we have
come to claim."

"Gentlemen," replied the mistress of the house, after she had tried to
bring them to her recollection, "as I have not the honor of knowing you,
with your permission I will go and call my husband. Gregoire, ask your
master to come."

Gregoire stepped from the first kitchen, which was the general
pandemonium, into the second, which was the laboratory where Maitre La
Huriere in his life-time had been in the habit of concocting the dishes
which he felt deserved to be prepared by his clever hands.

"The devil take me," muttered Coconnas, "if it does not make me feel
badly to see this house so gay when it ought to be so melancholy. Poor
La Huriere!"

"He tried to kill me," said La Mole, "but I pardon him with all my
heart."

La Mole had hardly uttered these words when a man appeared holding in
his hand a stew-pan, in the bottom of which he was browning some onions,
stirring them with a wooden spoon.

La Mole and Coconnas gave vent to a cry of amazement.

As they did so the man lifted his head and, replying by a similar cry,
dropped his stew-pan, retaining in his hand only his wooden spoon.

_In nomine Patris_," said the man, waving his spoon as he would have
done with a holy-water sprinkler, "_et Filii, et Spiritus sancti_"--

"Maitre La Huriere!" exclaimed the two young men.

"Messieurs de Coconnas and de la Mole!" cried La Huriere.

"So you are not dead?" asked Coconnas.

"Why! can it be that you are alive?" asked the landlord.

"Nevertheless, I saw you fall," said Coconnas, "I heard the crash of the
bullet, which broke something in you, I don't know what. I left you
lying in the gut