kept away,
the former hating the deceased and the latter being too busy. Mahoudeau
alone caught the party up at the rise of the Rue Lepic, and he explained
that Gagniere must have missed the train.

The hearse slowly ascended the steep thoroughfare which winds round
the flanks of the height of Montmartre; and now and then cross streets,
sloping downward, sudden gaps amid the houses, showed one the immensity
of Paris as deep and as broad as a sea. When the party arrived in front
of the Church of St. Pierre, and the coffin was carried up the steps,
it overtopped the great city for a moment. There was a grey wintry sky
overhead, large masses of clouds swept along, carried away by an icy
wind, and in the mist Paris seemed to expand, to become endless, filling
the horizon with threatening billows. The poor fellow who had wished to
conquer it, and had broken his neck in his fruitless efforts, now passed
in front of it, nailed under an oaken board, returning to the earth like
one of the city's muddy waves.

On leaving the church the female cousin disappeared, Mahoudeau likewise;
while the second cousin again took his position behind the hearse. Seven
other unknown persons decided to follow, and they started for the new
cemetery of St. Ouen, to which the populace has given the disquieting
and lugubrious name of Cayenne. There were ten mourners in all.

'Well, we two shall be the only old friends,' repeated Bongrand as he
walked on beside Sandoz.

The procession, preceded by the mourning coach in which the priest and
the choirboy were seated, now descended the other side of the height,
along winding streets as precipitous as mountain paths. The horses of
the hearse slipped over the slimy pavement; one could hear the wheels
jolting noisily. Right behind, the ten mourners took short and careful
steps, trying to avoid the puddles, and being so occupied with the
difficulty of the descent that they refrained from speaking. But at
the bottom of the Rue du Ruisseau, when they reached the Porte de
Clignancourt and the vast open spaces, where the boulevard running round
the city, the circular railway, the talus and moat of the fortifications
are displayed to view, there came sighs of relief, a few words were
exchanged, and the party began to straggle.

Sandoz and Bongrand by degrees found themselves behind all the others,
as if they had wished to isolate themselves from those folk whom they
had never previously seen. Just as the hea