The two funerals reached the church. Cantinet and the doorkeeper saw that no beggars troubled Schmucke. Villemot had given his word that Pons’ heir should be left in peace; he watched over his client, and gave the requisite sums; and Cibot’s humble bier, escorted by sixty or eighty persons, drew all the crowd after it to the cemetery. At the church door Pons’ funeral possession mustered four mourning-coaches, one for the priest and three for the relations; but one only was required, for the representative of the firm of Sonet departed during mass to give notice to his principal that the funeral was on the way, so that the design for the monument might be ready for the survivor at the gates of the cemetery. A single coach sufficed for Fraisier, Villemot, Schmucke, and Topinard; but the remaining two, instead of returning to the undertaker, followed in the procession to Pere-Lachaise--a useless procession, not unfrequently seen; there are always too many coaches when the dead are unknown beyond their own circle and there is no crowd at the funeral. Dear, indeed, the dead must have been in their lifetime if relative or friend will go with them so far as the cemetery in this Paris, where every one would fain have twenty-five hours in the day. But with the coachmen it is different; they lose their tips if they do not make the journey; so, empty or full, the mourning coaches go to the church and cemetery and return to the house for gratuities. A death is a sort of drinking-fountain for an unimagined crowd of thirsty mortals. The attendants at the church, the poor, the undertaker’s men, the drivers and sextons, are creatures like sponges that dip into a hearse and come out again saturated. From the church door, where he was beset with a swarm of beggars (promptly dispersed by the beadle), to Pere-Lachaise, poor Schmucke went as criminals went in old times from the Palais de Justice to the Place de Greve. It was his own funeral that he followed, clinging to Topinard’s hand, to the one living creature besides himself who felt a pang of real regret for Pons’ death.