“As you are thinking of raising a magnificent monument to the memory of your friend, sir, you have only to leave it all to me; I will undertake—­”

“What is all this?  What is all this?” asked La Sauvage.  “Has M. Schmucke ordered something?  Who may you be?”

“I represent the firm of Sonet, my dear madame, the biggest monumental stone-masons in Paris,” said the person in black, handing a business-card to the stalwart Sauvage.

“Very well, that will do.  Some one will go with you when the time comes; but you must not take advantage of the gentleman’s condition now.  You can quite see that he is not himself——­”

The agent led her out upon the landing.

“If you will undertake to get the order for us,” he said confidentially, “I am empowered to offer you forty francs.”

Mme. Sauvage grew placable.  “Very well, let me have your address,” said she.

Schmucke meantime being left to himself, and feeling the stronger for the soup and bread that he had been forced to swallow, returned at once to Pons’ rooms, and to his prayers.  He had lost himself in the fathomless depths of sorrow, when a voice sounding in his ears drew him back from the abyss of grief, and a young man in a suit of black returned for the eleventh time to the charge, pulling the poor, tortured victim’s coatsleeve until he listened.

“Sir!” said he.

“Vat ees it now?”

“Sir! we owe a supreme discovery to Dr. Gannal; we do not dispute his fame; he has worked miracles of Egypt afresh; but there have been improvements made upon his system.  We have obtained surprising results.  So, if you would like to see your friend again, as he was when he was alive—­”

“See him again!” cried Schmucke.  “Shall he speak to me?”

“Not exactly.  Speech is the only thing wanting,” continued the embalmer’s agent.  “But he will remain as he is after embalming for all eternity.  The operation is over in a few seconds.  Just an incision in the carotid artery and an injection.—­But it is high time; if you wait one single quarter of an hour, sir, you will not have the sweet satisfaction of preserving the body. . . .”

“Go to der teufel! . . .  Bons is ein spirit—­und dat spirit is in hefn.”

“That man has no gratitude in his composition,” remarked the youthful agent of one of the famous Gannal’s rivals; “he will not embalm his friend.”

The words were spoken under the archway, and addressed to La Cibot, who had just submitted her beloved to the process.

“What would you have, sir!” she said.  “He is the heir, the universal legatee.  As soon as they get what they want, the dead are nothing to them.”

An hour later, Schmucke saw Mme. Sauvage come into the room, followed by another man in a suit of black, a workman, to all appearance.

“Cantinet has been so obliging as to send this gentleman, sir,” she said; “he is coffin-maker to the parish.”