This southerner was trembling, defeated and softened by the emotional display of the funeral ceremony. Hemerlingue, as he stood facing him, was hardly more courageous. The gloomy music, the open grave, the speeches, the cannonade of that lofty philosophy of inevitable death, all these things had worked on the feelings of this fat baron. The voice of his old comrade completed the awakening of whatever there remained of human in that packet of gelatine. His old chum! It was the first time for ten years--since their quarrel--that he had seen him so near. How many things were recalled to him by those sun-tanned features, those broad shoulders, so ill adapted for the wearing of embroidered coats! The thin woollen rug full of holes, in which they used to wrap themselves both to sleep on the bridge of the _Sinai_, the food shared in brotherly fashion, the wanderings through the burned-up country round Marseilles, where they used to steal big onions and eat them raw by the side of some ditch, the dreams, the schemings, the pence put into a common fund, and, when fortune had begun to smile on them, the fun they had had together, those excellent quiet little suppers over which they would tell each other everything, with their elbows on the table. How can one ever reach the point of seriously quarrelling when one knows the other so well, when they have lived together like two twins at the breast of the lean and strong nurse, Poverty, sharing her sour milk and her rough caresses! These thoughts passed through Hemerlingue’s mind like a flash of lightning. Almost instinctively he let his heavy hand fall into the one which the Nabob was holding out to him. Something of the primitive animal was roused in them, something stronger than their enmity, and these two men, each of whom for ten years had been trying to bring the other to ruin and disgrace, fell to talking without any reserve. Generally, between friends newly met, after the first effusions are over, a silence comes as if they had no more to tell each other, while it is in reality the abundance of things, their precipitate rush, that prevents them from finding utterance. The two chums had touched that condition; but Jansoulet kept a tight grasp on the banker’s arm, fearing to see him escape and resist the kindly impulse he had just roused. “You are not in a hurry, are you? We can take a little walk, if you like. It has stopped raining, the air is pleasant; one feels twenty years younger.” “Yes, it is pleasant,” said Hemerlingue; “only I cannot walk for long; my legs are heavy.” “True, your poor legs. See, there is a bench over there. Let us go and sit down. Lean on me, old friend.”