Lunch being over, Monsieur C---- was asked to relate one of his own stories. I cannot give it entire, but the plot was this: A pilgrim, whom he called poor Jacques, hearing much of heaven, set out to find his way to the blessed abode, with only a little dog to accompany him on the journey. As he went he met many of his contemporaries, who had made what a walker would style but poor time. The allusions to well-known peculiarities in the various people and their occupation in the other life caused much amusement. For instance, Ingres the painter was seated by the roadside playing Rossini's music on the violin, on which instrument he was a great proficient. But he was known to detest the Italian's music before he started heavenward: his taste must then have grown _en route_. (Critics might object to this supposition.) However, Jacques was anxious to push on, and spent little time listening. But he was a good-hearted man, and, though he would not delay for his own amusement, he could not refuse to stop when fellow-pilgrims asked him for assistance. Little children were continually straying from the path, and without Jacques and his little dog would inevitably have been lost. Feeble old people were standing looking with despair at some obstacle that without Jacques's friendly arm they would have found it impossible to pass. Young men who never looked where they were walking were continually calling on him for a hand to help them out of the ditch where they had fallen; and young girls--well, one would have supposed they had never been given feet of their own to walk with, from the trouble they were to poor Jacques. The worst of it was, that when all these good people were well over their troubles they called Jacques a simpleton for his pains, and refused to have any intercourse with him, giving him the worst side of the road and laughing at his old-fashioned staff and scrip, and even at his little dog, to which they gave many a sly kick. Nor was it any wonder, for there were many in the company robed in silk, wearing precious stones and with well-filled wallets by their sides. Jacques was but human, and often he wished he had never set out for heaven at all in such company; but even in their bitterest moods neither Jacques nor the little dog could ever hear a cry of distress without forgetting all unkindness and rushing at once to the rescue. These labors exhausted Jacques's strength: the little dog, too, was worn to a shadow, and so timid from ill-treatment that it was only when some great occasion called out his mettle that you saw what a noble little dog-heart he had. He did his best to comfort his master, but when Jacques's sandals were worn out and his cloak in rags, and when he looked forward and saw nothing yet of the holy city in view, though he still tried to go forward, Nature gave way: he sank to the ground, and the little dog licked his hands in vain to awaken him.