peoples decipher no principles but those that
are writ in blood, and the evils of legality will always be pacific; it
flattens a nation down, that is all. Jacquet, a man of modern liberty,
returned home reflecting on the benefits of arbitrary power.

When he went with his report to Jules, he found it necessary to deceive
him, for the unhappy man was in a high fever, unable to leave his bed.
The minister of the Interior mentioned, at a ministerial dinner that
same evening, the singular fancy of a Parisian in wishing to burn his
wife after the manner of the Romans. The clubs of Paris took up the
subject, and talked for a while of the burials of antiquity. Ancient
things were just then becoming a fashion, and some persons declared that
it would be a fine thing to re-establish, for distinguished persons, the
funeral pyre. This opinion had its defenders and its detractors. Some
said that there were too many such personages, and the price of wood
would be enormously increased by such a custom; moreover, it would
be absurd to see our ancestors in their 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 c