Berenice to order a funeral which should not cost more than
two hundred francs, including the service at the shabby little church of
the Bonne-Nouvelle. As soon as she had gone out, he sat down to a table,
and beside the dead body of his love he composed ten rollicking songs
to fit popular airs. The effort cost him untold anguish, but at last the
brain began to work at the bidding of Necessity, as if suffering were
not; and already Lucien had learned to put Claude Vignon's terrible
maxims in practice, and to raise a barrier between heart and brain. What
a night the poor boy spent over those drinking songs, writing by the
light of the tall wax candles while the priest recited the prayers for
the dead!

Morning broke before the last song was finished. Lucien tried it over
to a street-song of the day, to the consternation of Berenice and the
priest, who thought that he was mad:--

Lads, 'tis tedious waste of time
To mingle song and reason;
Folly calls for laughing rhyme,
Sense is out of season.
Let Apollo be forgot
When Bacchus fills the drinking-cup;
Any catch is good, I wot,
If good fellows take it up.
Let philosophers protest,
Let us laugh,
And quaff,
And a fig for the rest!

As Hippocrates has said,
Every jolly fellow,
When a century has sped,
Still is fit and mellow.
No more following of a lass
With the palsy in your legs?
--While your hand can hold a glass,
You can drain it to the dregs,
With an undiminished zest.
Let us laugh,
And quaff,
And a fig for the rest!

Whence we come we know full well.
Whiter are we going?
Ne'er a one of us can tell,
'Tis a thing past knowing.
Faith! what does it signify,
Take the good that Heaven sends;
It is certain that we die,
Certain that we live, my friends.
Life is nothing but a jest.
Let us laugh,
And quaff,
And a fig for the rest!

He was shouting the reckless refrain when d'Arthez and Bianchon arrived,
to find him in a paroxysm of despair and exhaustion, utterly unable to
make a fair copy of his verses. A torrent of tears followed; and when,
amid his sobs, he had told his story, he saw the tears standing in his
friends' eyes.

"This wipes out many sins," said d'Arthez.

"Happy are they who suffer for their sins in this world," the priest
said solemnly.

At the sig