feelings; he will weep over a stage-hero, over Monsieur Germeuil in the “Auberge des Adrets,” the man with the butter-colored breeches, murdered by Macaire; but his heart is ossified in the matter of real dead men. Dead men are ciphers, numbers, to him; it is his business to organize death. Yet he does meet, three times in a century, perhaps, with an occasion when his part becomes sublime, and then he _is_ sublime through every hour of his day,--in times of pestilence. When Jacquet approached him this absolute monarch was evidently out of temper. “I told you,” he was saying, “to water the flowers from the rue Massena to the place Regnault de Saint-Jean-d’Angely. You paid no attention to me! _Sac-a-papier_! suppose the relations should take it into their heads to come here to-day because the weather is fine, what would they say to me? They’d shriek as if they were burned; they’d say horrid things of us, and calumniate us--” “Monsieur,” said Jacquet, “we want to know where Madame Jules is buried.” “Madame Jules _who_?” he asked. “We’ve had three Madame Jules within the last week. Ah,” he said, interrupting himself, “here comes the funeral of Monsieur le Baron de Maulincour! A fine procession, that! He has soon followed his grandmother. Some families, when they begin to go, rattle down like a wager. Lots of bad blood in Parisians.” “Monsieur,” said Jacquet, touching him on the arm, “the person I spoke of is Madame Jules Desmarets, the wife of the broker of that name.” “Ah, I know!” he replied, looking at Jacquet. “Wasn’t it a funeral with thirteen mourning coaches, and only one mourner in the twelve first? It was so droll we all noticed it--” “Monsieur, take care, Monsieur Desmarets is with me; he might hear you, and what you say is not seemly.” “I beg pardon, monsieur! you are quite right. Excuse me, I took you for heirs. Monsieur,” he continued, after consulting a plan of the cemetery, “Madame Jules is in the rue Marechal Lefebre, alley No. 4, between Mademoiselle Raucourt, of the Comedie-Francaise, and Monsieur Moreau-Malvin, a butcher, for whom a handsome tomb in white marble has been ordered, which will be one of the finest in the cemetery--” “Monsieur,” said Jacquet, interrupting him, “that does not help us.” “True,” said the official, looking round him. “Jean,” he cried, to a man whom he saw at a little distance, “conduct these gentlemen to the grave of Madame Jules Desmarets, the broker’s wife. You know where it is,--near to Mademoiselle Raucourt, the tomb where there’s a bust.” The two friends followed the guide; but they did not reach the steep path which leads to the upper part of the cemetery without having to pass through a score of proposals and requests, made, with honied softness, by the touts of marble-workers, iron-founders, and monumental sculptors. “If monsieur would like to order _something_, we would do it on the most reasonable terms.”