offices, to the undertaker’s and the church, paying everywhere, and full of indifference so far as that went, since the priests were willing to pray over that corpse with a black circle round its neck.  Among the people who were waiting he as yet only perceived some neighbours, together with a few inquisitive folk; while other people peered out of the house windows and whispered together, excited by the tragedy.  Claude’s friends would, no doubt, soon come.  He, Sandoz, had not been able to write to any members of the family, as he did not know their addresses.  However, he retreated into the background on the arrival of two relatives, whom three lines in the newspapers had roused from the forgetfulness in which Claude himself, no doubt, had left them.  There was an old female cousin,* with the equivocal air of a dealer in second-hand goods, and a male cousin, of the second degree, a wealthy man, decorated with the Legion of Honour, and owning one of the large Paris drapery shops.  He showed himself good-naturedly condescending in his elegance, and desirous of displaying an enlightened taste for art.  The female cousin at once went upstairs, turned round the studio, sniffed at all the bare wretchedness, and then walked down again, with a hard mouth, as if she were irritated at having taken the trouble to come.  The second cousin, on the contrary, drew himself up and walked first behind the hearse, filling the part of chief mourner with proud and pleasant fitness.

  * Madame Sidonie, who figures in M. Zola’s novel, ‘La Curee.’ 
    The male cousin, mentioned immediately afterwards, is Octave
    Mouret, the leading character of ‘Pot-Bouille’ and ’Au Bonheur
    des Dames.’—­ED.

As the procession was starting off, Bongrand came up, and, after shaking hands with Sandoz, remained beside him.  He was gloomy, and, glancing at the fifteen or twenty strangers who followed, he murmured: 

‘Ah! poor chap!  What! are there only we two?’

Dubuche was at Cannes with his children.  Jory and Fagerolles kept away, the former hating the deceased and the latter being too busy.  Mahoudeau alone caught the party up at the rise of the Rue Lepic, and he explained that Gagniere must have missed the train.

The hearse slowly ascended the steep thoroughfare which winds round the flanks of the height of Montmartre; and now and then cross streets, sloping downward, sudden gaps amid the houses, showed one the immensity of Paris as deep and as broad as a sea.  When the party arrived in front of the Church of St. Pierre, and the coffin was carried up the steps, it overtopped the great city for a moment.  There was a grey wintry sky overhead, large masses of clouds swept along, carried away by an icy wind, and in the mist Paris seemed to expand, to become endless, filling the horizon with threatening billows.  The poor fellow who had wished to conquer it, and had broken his neck in his fruitless efforts, now passed in front of it, nailed under an oaken board, returning to the earth like one of the city’s muddy waves.