round, in his fear of being followed, the strong, erect shoulders of the Nabob appeared at the entrance to the path.  Impossible for the big man to slip away through one of the narrow passages left between the tombs, which are placed so close together that there is not even space to kneel.  The damp, rich soil slipped and gave way beneath his feet.  He decided to walk on with an air of indifference, hoping that perhaps the other might not recognise him.  But a hoarse and powerful voice cried behind him: 

“Lazarus!”

His name—­the name of this rich man—­was Lazarus.  He made no reply, but tried to catch up a group of officers who were moving on, very far in front of him.

“Lazarus!  Oh, Lazarus!”

Just as in old times on the quay of Marseilles.  Under the influence of old habit he was tempted to stop; then the remembrance of his infamies, of all the ill he had done the Nabob, that he was still occupied in doing him, came back to him suddenly with a horrible fear so strong that it amounted to a paroxysm, when an iron hand laid hold of him unceremoniously.  A sweat of terror broke out over all his flabby limbs, his face became still more yellow, his eyes blinked in anticipation of the formidable blow which he expected to come, while his fat arms were instinctively raised to ward it off.

“Oh, don’t be afraid.  I wish you no harm,” said Jansoulet sadly.  “Only I have come to beg you to do no more to me.”

He stooped to breathe.  The banker, bewildered and frightened, opened wide his round owl’s eyes in presence of this suffocating emotion.

“Listen, Lazarus; it is you who are the stronger in this war we have been waging on each other for so long.  I am down; yes, down.  My shoulders have touched the ground.  Now, be generous; spare your old chum.  Give me quarter; come, give me quarter.”

This southerner was trembling, defeated and softened by the emotional display of the funeral ceremony.  Hemerlingue, as he stood facing him, was hardly more courageous.  The gloomy music, the open grave, the speeches, the cannonade of that lofty philosophy of inevitable death, all these things had worked on the feelings of this fat baron.  The voice of his old comrade completed the awakening of whatever there remained of human in that packet of gelatine.

His old chum!  It was the first time for ten years—­since their quarrel—­that he had seen him so near.  How many things were recalled to him by those sun-tanned features, those broad shoulders, so ill adapted for the wearing of embroidered coats!  The thin woollen rug full of holes, in which they used to wrap themselves both to sleep on the bridge of the Sinai, the food shared in brotherly fashion, the wanderings through the burned-up country round Marseilles, where they used to steal big onions and eat them raw by the side of some ditch, the dreams, the schemings, the pence put into a common fund, and, when fortune had begun to smile on them, the fun they had had together, those excellent quiet little suppers over which they would tell each other everything, with their elbows on the table.