tion of the church, as if to see a mid-Lent
festival or the home-coming of victorious troops. Paris, hungry for the
spectacular, constructs it indifferently out of anything, civil war as
readily as the burial of a statesman.

It was necessary for the cab to retrace its course again and to make a
new circuit; and it is easy to imagine the bad temper of the driver and
his beasts, all three of them Parisian in soul and passions, at having
to deprive themselves of so fine a show. Then, as all the life of Paris
had been drawn into the great artery of the boulevard, there began
through the deserted and silent streets--a capricious and irregular
drive--the snail-like progress of a cab taken by the hour. First
touching the extreme points of the Faubourg Saint-Martin and the
Faubourg Saint-Denis, returning again towards the centre, and at the
conclusion of circuits and dodges finding always the same obstacle in
ambush, the same crowd, some fragment of the black defile perceived for
a moment at the branching of a street, unfolding itself in the rain to
the sound of muffled drums--a dull and heavy sound, like that of earth
falling on a coffin-lid.

What torture for Felicia! It was her weakness and her remorse crossing
Paris in this solemn pomp, this funeral train, this public mourning
reflected by the very clouds; and the proud girl revolted against this
affront done her by fate, and tried to escape from it to the back of
the carriage, where she remained exhausted with eyes closed, while old
Crenmitz, believing her nervousness to be grief, did her best to comfort
her, herself wept over their separation, and hiding also, left the
entire window of the cab to the big Algerian hound with his finely
modelled head scenting the wind, and his two paws resting in the
sash with an heraldic stiffness of pose. Finally, after a thousand
interminable windings, the cab suddenly came to a halt, jolted on again
with difficulty amid cries and abuse, then, tossed about, the luggage on
top threatening its equilibrium, it ended by coming to a full stop, held
prisoner, as it were, at anchor.

"_Bon Dieu!_ what a mass of people!" murmured the Crenmitz, terrified.

Felicia came out of her stupor.

"Where are we?"

Under a colourless, smoky sky, blotted out by a fine network of rain and
stretched like gauze over everything, there lay an immense space filled
by an ocean of humanity surging from all the streets that led to it,
and motionless around a