de Mauprat, to Etienne Mahye, &c. Item--

The first words read by the apprentice had stilled the breaking storm
of the Master's anger. It dissolved in a fragrant dew of proud
reminiscence, profit, and scandal.

He himself had no open prejudices. He was an official of the public--or
so he counted himself--and he very shrewdly knew his duty in that walk
of life to which it had pleased Heaven to call him. The greater the
notoriety of the death, the more in evidence was the Master and all
his belongings. Death with honour was an advantage to him; death with
disaster a boon; death with scandal was a godsend. It brought tears
of gratitude to his eyes when the death and the scandal were in high
places. These were the only real tears he ever shed. His heart was in
his head, and the head thought solely of Etienne Mahye. Though he wore
an air of sorrow and sympathy in public, he had no more feeling than a
hangman. His sympathy seemed to say to the living, "I wonder how soon
you'll come into my hands," and to the dead, "What a pity you can only
die once--and second-hand coffins so hard to get!"

Item: paid to me, Etienne Mahye,

droned the voice of the apprentice,

for rosewood coffin--

"O my good," interrupted the Master of Burials with a barren chuckle,
and rubbing his hands with glee, "O my good, that was a day in a
lifetime! I've done fine work in my time, but upon that day--not a cloud
above, no dust beneath, a flowing tide, and a calm sea. The Royal Court,
too, caught on a sudden marching in their robes, turns to and joins the
cortegee, and the little birds a-tweeting-tweeting, and two parsons at
the grave. Pardingue, the Lord was--with me that day, and--"

The apprentice laughed--a dry, mirthless laugh of disbelief and
ridicule. "Ba su, master, the Lord was watching you. There was two
silver bits inside that coffin, on Sieur's eyes."

"Bigre!" The Master was pale with rage. His lips drew back, disclosing
long dark teeth and sickly gums, in a grimace of fury. He reached out to
seize a hammer lying at his hand, but the apprentice said quickly:

"Sapri--that's the cholera hammer!"

The Master of Burials dropped the hammer as though it were at white
heat, and eyed it with scared scrutiny. This hammer had been used in
nailing down the coffins of six cholera patients who had died in one
house at Rozel Bay a year before. The Master would not himself go near
the place, so this apprentice had gone, on a promise fro