all round the square a prolonged stir and much pushing about. From
the porch a journalist ran forward to meet her, and taking her hands
besought her to bear up. 'Yes,' she said, 'I ought to be calm; I will,'
Whereupon, drying her tears and forcing them back with her handkerchief,
she entered, or it should rather be said 'went on,' into the darkness of
the nave, with its background of glimmering tapers, fell down before
a desk on the ladies' side in a prostration of self-abandonment, and
rising with a sorrowful air said to another actress at her side, 'How
much did they take at the Vaudeville last night?' '168L. 18s.,' answered
her friend, with the same accent of grief.

Lost in the crowd at the edge of the square, Abel de Freydet heard the
people round him say, 'It's Marguerite. How well she did it!' But being
a small man, he was trying in vain to make his way, when a hand was laid
upon his shoulder. 'What, still in Paris? It must be a trial for your
poor sister,' said Vedrine, as he carried him along. Working his way
with his strong elbows through the stream of people who only came up to
his shoulder, and saying occasionally, 'Excuse me, gentlemen--members of
the family,' he brought to the front with him his country friend,
who, though delighted at the meeting, felt some embarrassment, as the
sculptor talked after his fashion, freely and audibly. 'Bless me, what
luck Loisillon has! Why there weren't more people for Beranger. This is
the sort of thing to keep a young man's pecker up.' Here Freydet, seeing
the hearse approaching, took off his hat. 'Good gracious, what have you
done to your head? Turn round. Why you look like Louis Philippe!' The
poet's moustache was turned down, his hair brushed forward, and his
pleasant face showed its complexion of ruddy brown between whiskers
touched with grey. He drew up his short figure with a stiff dignity,
whereat Vedrine laughing said, 'Ah, I see. Made up for the grandees at
Chantilly? So you are still bent upon the Academie! Why, just look at
the exhibition yonder.'

In the sunlight and on the broad enclosure the official attendants
immediately behind the hearse made a shocking show. Chance might seem
to have chosen them for a wager among the most ridiculous seniors in the
Institute, and they looked especially-ugly in the uniform designed
by David, the coat embroidered with green, the hat, the Court
sword, beating against legs for which the designer was certainly not
responsib