It might have been—­yet I was not a coward—­that the little coffin in that little room at the end of the saloon had something to do with this uneasiness.  On each side of that narrow room (which opened upon a long hall leading to the front of the building) were the small windows looking out upon the garden, which I always unbolted first.  I say I do not know that this presence of death had anything to do with my trepidation.  The death of a child was no very solemn or very uncommon thing in my master’s family.  He had many children, and, when death thinned their ranks, took the loss like a philosopher,—­as he was,—­a French philosopher.  He philosophized that his utmost exertions could not do much more for the child than bequeath to him just such a life as he led, and a share in just such a saloon as he owned; and therefore, if a priest and a coffin insured the little innocent admission into heaven without any extra charge, he would not betray such lack of wisdom as to demur at the proposition.  Therefore, very quietly, since I had been in his employ, (about a twelvemonth,) three of his children, one by one, had been brought down to that little room at the end of the saloon, and thence through the long hall, through the crowded street out to some unheard-of burying-ground, where a pot of flowers and a painted cross supplied the place of a head-stone.  The shop was not shut up on these occasions:  that would have been an unnecessary interference with the comfort of customers, and loss of time and money.  The necessity of providing for his little living family had quite disenthralled Monsieur C——­ from any weakly sentimentality in regard to his little dead family.

So I do not know why I shuddered, being also myself somewhat of a philosopher,—­of such cool philosophy as grows out inevitably from the hard and stony strata of an overworked life.  The sleeper within was certainly better cared for now than he ever had been in life.  Monsieur’s purse afforded no holiday-dress but a shroud; three of these in requisition within so short a time quite scanted the wardrobe of the other children.  Little Jacques had always been a somewhat restless and unhappy baby, longing for fresh air, and a change which he never got; it seemed likely, so far as the child’s promise was concerned, that the “great change” was his only chance of variety, and the very best thing that could have happened to him.

And yet, after all, there was something about his death which individualized it, and hung a certain sadness over its occurrence that does not often belong to the death of children, or at least had not marked the departure of his two stout little brothers.  Scarlet-fever and croup and measles are such every-day, red-winged, mottled angels, that no one is appalled at their presence; they take off the little sufferer in such vigorous fashion, clutch him with so hearty a grip, that one is compelled to open the door, let them out, and feel relieved when the exit is made.  It is only when some dim-eyed, white-robed shape, scarcely seen, scarcely felt, steps softly in and steals away the little troublesome bundle of life with solemn eye and hushed lip, that we have time to pause, to look, to grieve.