On both sides of the road
were stonemasons' yards, in which the hard white of slabs, images, and
crosses mingled with the gold of _immortelles_ and the black or white
beads of wreaths and memorials.

'And what about Vedrine's statue? Which way do we decide?' he asked
abruptly, in the tone of a man who means to confine himself to business.

'Well, really--' she began. 'But, oh dear, oh dear, I shall hurt your
feelings again?'

'My feelings! how so?'

The day before, they had been to make a last inspection of the knight,
before he was sent to the foundry. At a previous visit the Princess had
received a disagreeable impression, not so much from Vedrine's work,
which she scarcely looked at, as from the strange studio with trees
growing in it, with lizards and wood-lice running about the walls, and
all around it roofless ruins, suggesting recollections of the incendiary
mob. But from the second visit the poor little woman had come back
literally ill. 'My dear, it is the horror of horrors!' Such was her real
opinion, as given the same evening to Madame Astier. But she did not
dare to say so to Paul, knowing that he was a friend of the sculptor,
and also because the name of Vedrine is one of the two or three which
the fashionable world has chosen to honour in spite of its natural and
implanted tastes, and regards with an irrational admiration by way of
pretending to artistic originality. That the coarse rude figure should
not be put on dear Herbert's tomb she was determined, but she was at a
loss for a presentable reason.

'Really, Monsieur Paul, between ourselves--of course it is a splendid
work--a fine _Vedrine_--but you must allow that it is a little _triste!_

'Well, but for a tomb----' suggested Paul.

'And then, if you will not mind, there is this.' With much hesitation
she came to the point. Really, you know, a man upon a camp bedstead with
nothing on! Really she did not think it fit. It might be taken for a
portrait!' And just think of poor Herbert, the correctest of men! What
would it look like?'

'There is a good deal in that,' said Paul gravely, and he threw his
friend Vedrine overboard with as little concern as a litter of kittens.
'After all, if you do not like the figure, we can put another, or none
at all. It would have a more striking effect. The tent empty; the bed
ready, and no one to lie on it!'

The Princess, whose chief satisfaction was that the shirtless ruffian
would not be seen there, exclaim