I cannot describe my mother's grief on the occasion. Grace had been her own personal attendant ever since she could remember. She had been taken into my grandmother's nursery a little maid of nine years old, and had been specially assigned to my mother. She had followed her mistress to a strange land, had been with her through all her ill-health and the loss of her many children, had been nurse, friend, companion, and servant, all in one. I loved Grace dearly, lamented her deeply; but the event was not to me what it was to my mother. However, she was gone, and there was an end. The servants wept, too, as they prepared her body for the grave. They forgot all the scoldings she had given them, and only remembered how she had nursed them in sickness, and the numberless kindnesses she had shown them and their friends at home. "I was vexed enough at her this morning," sobbed Julienne, who, as a bit of a slattern, and especially as being guilty of the crowning enormity of having a sweetheart, most frequently fell under the displeasure of Mrs. Grace; "but I am sure I would dust all the furniture of the house thrice over if it would do her any good." "And what will madame do without her?" asked Marie. "Nobody can know her ways like Mamselle Grace, though there are perhaps others who can govern the household as well, or even better. I always thought she was very wasteful of sugar and honey in preserving the fruits." "Yes, you would like them as sour as last year's cider," retorted Julienne. "Mamselle Grace was not a skinflint, whatever else she was." "What will you do about the funeral?" asked Andrew of my father. "Shall you send to Granville or Avranches for an undertaker?" "No indeed!" answered my father. "I have given special orders to the servants not to say a word about poor Grace's death. It would be sure to bring down upon us a visitation. Mathew is making her a coffin now, and we must place the body in the vault beneath the chapel, as soon as may be—this very night, if possible. There she may perhaps rest in peace. I would not, if I could help it, have my poor old friend's body thrown out into a ditch like a dead dog." "They would not dare to do it," said Andrew, aghast. "They would be sure to do it," was my father's answer. "Things have not improved since the Duke of Guise kicked the dead face of brave old Coligny. If it were only the dead who were warred upon, it would not be so much matter." "And yet somehow an insult to the dead seems baser and more cowardly than one offered to the living," said Andrew thoughtfully. "Many a rude fellow who would knock a man down as soon as look at him, as we say, would be horrified at any rough treatment of a corpse. Why is it?"