y sold second-hand linen.

"It will be cheaper there," said he.

This cruelty on the part of Jacques' father was explained to me later
on. He was furious because his son had chosen an artistic career, and
his anger remained unappeased even in the presence of a coffin.

But I am not very far from Mademoiselle Francine and her muff. I will
return to them. Mademoiselle Francine was the first and only mistress of
Jacques, who did not die very old, for he was scarcely three and twenty
when his father would have had him laid naked in the earth. The story of
his love was told me by Jacques himself when he was No. 14 and I was No.
16 in the Sainte Victoire ward--an ugly spot to die in.

Ah reader! Before I begin this story, which would be a touching one if I
could tell it as it was told to me by my friend Jacques, let me take a
pull or two at the old clay pipe he gave me on the day that the doctor
forbade its use by him. Yet at night, when the male nurse was asleep, my
friend Jacques would borrow his pipe with a little tobacco from me. It
is so wearisome at night in those vast wards, when one suffers and
cannot sleep.

"Only two or three whiffs," he would say, and I would let him have it;
and Sister Sainte-Genevieve did not seem to notice the smoke when she
made her round. Ah, good sister! How kind you were, and how beautiful
you looked, too, when you came to sprinkle us with holy water. We could
see you approaching, walking slowly along the gloomy aisles, draped in
your white veil, which fell in such graceful folds, and which our friend
Jacques admired so much. Ah kind sister! You were the Beatrice of that
Inferno. So sweet were your consolations that we were always complaining
in order to be consoled by you. If my friend Jacques had not died one
snowy day he would have carved you a nice little Virgin Mary to put in
your cell, good Sister Sainte-Genevieve.

Well, and the muff? I do not see anything of the muff.

_Another Reader_: And Mademoiselle Francine, where about is she, then?

_First Reader_: This story is not very lively.

_Second Reader_: We shall see further on.

I really beg your pardon, gentlemen, it is my friend Jacques' pipe that
has led me away into these digressions. But, besides, I am not pledged
to make you laugh. Times are not always gay in Bohemia.

Jacques and Francine had met in a house in the Rue de la
Tour-d'Auvergne, into which they had both moved at the same time at the
April quarter.

T