ng life,
wished to rest in his native country. But no other indications of his
wishes, nothing about his relatives, had been found. It seemed as if he
was a man without a family, without any place in society, or any claim
on any one to bury him. And this distressing isolation added to the
morbid curiosity which was attached to the house, now all draped in
black, with the letter "R" standing out in white against its silver
escutcheon.

Who would be chief mourner? M. Rovere had appointed no one. He had asked
in that paper that a short notice should be inserted in the paper giving
the hour and date of the services, and giving him the simple title
ex-Consul. "I hope," went on the writer, "to be taken to the cemetery
quietly and followed by intimate friends, if any remain."

Intimate friends were scarce in that crowd, without doubt, but the dead
man's wish could hardly be carried out. Those obsequies which he had
wished to be quiet became a sort of fete, funereal and noisy; where the
thousands of people crowding the Boulevard crushed each other in their
desire to see, and pressed almost upon the draped funeral car which the
neighbors had covered with flowers.

Everything is a spectacle for Parisians. The guardians of the peace
strove to keep back the crowds; some gamins climbed into the branches of
the trees. The bier had been placed at the foot of the staircase in the
narrow corridor opening upon the street. Mme. Moniche had placed upon a
table in the lodge some loose leaves, where Rovere's unknown friends
could write their names.

Bernardet, alert, with his eyes wide open, studying the faces, searching
the eyes, mingled with the crowd, looked at the file of people,
scrutinized, one by one, the signatures; Bernardet, in mourning, wearing
black gloves, seemed more like an undertaker's assistant than a police
spy. Once he found himself directly in front of the open door of the
lodge and the table where the leaves lay covered with signatures; when
in the half light of the corridor draped with black, where the bier lay,
he saw a man of about fifty, pale and very sad looking. He had arrived,
in his turn in the line, at the table, where he signed his name. Mme.
Moniche, clothed in black, with a white handkerchief in her hand,
although she was not weeping, found herself side by side with Bernardet;
in fact, their elbows touched. When the man reached the table, coming
from the semi-darkness of the passage, and stepped into the