The crowd buzzed about the lodge like a swarm of flies. M. Rovère's body had been brought back from the Morgue. The obsequies would naturally attract an enormous crowd; all the more, as the mystery was still as deep as ever. Among his papers had been found a receipt for a tomb in the cemetery at Montmartre, bought by him about a year before. In another paper, not dated, were found directions as to how his funeral was to be conducted. M. Rovère, after having passed a wandering life, wished to rest in his native country. But no other indications of his wishes, nothing about his relatives, had been found. It seemed as if he was a man without a family, without any place in society, or any claim on any one to bury him. And this distressing isolation added to the morbid curiosity which was attached to the house, now all draped in black, with the letter "R" standing out in white against its silver escutcheon. Who would be chief mourner? M. Rovère had appointed no one. He had asked in that paper that a short notice should be inserted in the paper giving the hour and date of the services, and giving him the simple title ex-Consul. "I hope," went on the writer, "to be taken to the cemetery quietly and followed by intimate friends, if any remain." Intimate friends were scarce in that crowd, without doubt, but the dead man's wish could hardly be carried out. Those obsequies which he had wished to be quiet became a sort of fête, funereal and noisy; where the thousands of people crowding the Boulevard crushed each other in their desire to see, and pressed almost upon the draped funeral car which the neighbors had covered with flowers. Everything is a spectacle for Parisians. The guardians of the peace strove to keep back the crowds; some gamins climbed into the branches of the trees. The bier had been placed at the foot of the staircase in the narrow corridor opening upon the street. Mme. Moniche had placed upon a table in the lodge some loose leaves, where Rovère's unknown friends could write their names.