and the advocate shrugging his
shoulders cynically replied:

"A bruise, a fatal fall; strange that he should have died of it.
It has been said, the lower in the scale of being, the higher the
tenacity of life. Yet here is an inferior intelligence dies of as
little corporeal damage, as might a poet or a philosopher. There
is no certainty in speculation, for by this experiment it has been
proved, that the bulls-eye in the stable window, in falling is as
fragile as the palace's clearest pane of crystal. Who would have
thought it? A dunce, that no one would have branded for having
brains, has from a mere tumble given up the ghost. Bury him, bury
him; I am sorry for it, but cannot howl," and at these last words
a howl was heard from below, and soon Babet Blais came rushing
along the corridor, wringing her hands, and frantically demanding:
"Where is he, where is my boy, my sweet Narcisse?" and threw herself
upon the corpse of her son. The advocate looked on with a bitter
smile, and when he beheld her covering with kisses the cold, coarse
features, exclaimed: "How these things love each other!--but when
he was alive she would give him the food out of her mouth, draw
for him the blood from her veins, sacrifice the immortal soul in
her body with lies and patent perjury and crookedest excuses, if
so was that she might screen him and his faults, deceiving
me.--Beshrew thee, woman!--but wherefore should I curse thee? thou
art what thou wert made to be, even as I am that which I was made
to be, a desolation and a miserable man:" and when he ceased Babet
started from her knees, and, looking on him with new born fierceness,
cried: "Monster, not master; man killer, son killer,--oh, you have
killed my own, my dear Narcisse! murdered my son, my boy, my child,
my only joy:" and she again cast herself upon the body, and, with
her face nestling in the dead bosom, sobbed and wept aloud.

The advocate seemed softened, and, looking at Claude, demanded:
"Who is there that shall not fulfil his fate? for this I was born,
and for it I shall die." The sheriff again essayed to remove him,
but he sank at his touch, as the dust of an ancient corpse falls
before the breath of the outer atmosphere, and with mortality
moulding his visage: "Stay," he said, "let me die here; death has
arrested me, he needs no warrant." A spasm passed over his face,
his frame slightly quivered; and looking beseechingly at Claude,
the latter bent tenderly over him, and he