On leaving the church the female cousin disappeared, Mahoudeau likewise; while the second cousin again took his position behind the hearse.  Seven other unknown persons decided to follow, and they started for the new cemetery of St. Ouen, to which the populace has given the disquieting and lugubrious name of Cayenne.  There were ten mourners in all.

‘Well, we two shall be the only old friends,’ repeated Bongrand as he walked on beside Sandoz.

The procession, preceded by the mourning coach in which the priest and the choirboy were seated, now descended the other side of the height, along winding streets as precipitous as mountain paths.  The horses of the hearse slipped over the slimy pavement; one could hear the wheels jolting noisily.  Right behind, the ten mourners took short and careful steps, trying to avoid the puddles, and being so occupied with the difficulty of the descent that they refrained from speaking.  But at the bottom of the Rue du Ruisseau, when they reached the Porte de Clignancourt and the vast open spaces, where the boulevard running round the city, the circular railway, the talus and moat of the fortifications are displayed to view, there came sighs of relief, a few words were exchanged, and the party began to straggle.

Sandoz and Bongrand by degrees found themselves behind all the others, as if they had wished to isolate themselves from those folk whom they had never previously seen.  Just as the hearse was passing the city gate, the painter leant towards the novelist.

‘And the little woman, what is going to be done with her?’

‘Ah! how dreadful it is!’ replied Sandoz.  ’I went to see her yesterday at the hospital.  She has brain fever.  The house doctor maintains that they will save her, but that she will come out of it ten years older and without any strength.  Do you know that she had come to such a point that she no longer knew how to spell.  Such a crushing fall, a young lady abased to the level of a drudge!  Yes, if we don’t take care of her like a cripple, she will end by becoming a scullery-maid somewhere.’

‘And not a copper, of course?’

’Not a copper.  I thought I should find the studies Claude made from nature for his large picture, those superb studies which he afterwards turned to such poor account.  But I ferreted everywhere; he gave everything away; people robbed him.  No, nothing to sell, not a canvas that could be turned to profit, nothing but that huge picture, which I demolished and burnt with my own hands, and right gladly, I assure you, even as one avenges oneself.’

They became silent for a moment.  The broad road leading to St. Ouen stretched out quite straight as far as the eye could reach; and over the plain went the procession, pitifully small, lost, as it were, on that highway, along which there flowed a river of mud.  A line of palings bordered it on either side, waste land extended both to right and left, while afar off one only saw some factory chimneys and a few lofty white houses, standing alone, obliquely to the road.  They passed through the Clignancourt fete, with booths, circuses, and roundabouts on either side, all shivering in the abandonment of winter, empty dancing cribs, mouldy swings, and a kind of stage homestead, ’The Picardy Farm,’ looking dismally sad between its broken fences.