ity where the number of tears shed
on black draperies is tariffed, where the laws recognize seven classes
of funerals, where the scrap of ground to hold the dead is sold at its
weight in silver, where grief is worked for what it is worth, where the
prayers of the Church are costly, and the vestry claim payment for extra
voices in the _Dies irae_,--all attempt to get out of the rut prescribed
by the authorities for sorrow is useless and impossible.

"It would have been to me," said Jules, "a comfort in my misery. I meant
to have died away from here, and I hoped to hold her in my arms in a
distant grave. I did not know that bureaucracy could send its claws into
our very coffins."

He now wished to see if room had been left for him beside his wife. The
two friends went to the cemetery. When they reached it they found (as
at the doors of museums, galleries, and coach-offices) _ciceroni_, who
proposed to guide them through the labyrinth of Pere-Lachaise. Neither
Jules nor Jacquet could have found the spot where Clemence lay. Ah,
frightful anguish! They went to the lodge to consult the porter of the
cemetery. The dead have a porter, and there are hours when the dead are
"not receiving." It is necessary to upset all the rules and regulations
of the upper and lower police to obtain permission to weep at night, in
silence and solitude, over the grave where a loved one lies. There's a
rule for summer and a rule for winter about this.

Certainly, of all the porters in Paris, the porter of Pere-Lachaise is
the luckiest. In the first place, he has no gate-cord to pull; then,
instead of a lodge, he has a house,--an establishment which is not
quite ministerial, although a vast number of persons come under his
administration, and a good many employees. And this governor of the
dead has a salary, with emoluments, and acts under powers of which
none complain; he plays despot at his ease. His lodge is not a place of
business, though it has departments where the book-keeping of receipts,
expenses, and profits, is carried on. The man is not a _suisse_, nor a
concierge, nor actually a porter. The gate which admits the dead stands
wide open; and though there are monuments and buildings to be cared
for, he is not a care-taker. In short, he is an indefinable anomaly, an
authority which participates in all, and yet is nothing,--an authority
placed, like the dead on whom it is based, outside of all. Nevertheless,
this exceptional man grows out