she sang some arch little French songs—songs
that had refrains like the fluttering of birds'
wings, or the pattering of mice into their holes—
songs which didn't mean much, and were mainly,
if you please, nonsense; but which, at least,
didn't mean mischief—at once a rarity and an
advantage, I apprehend, in the vocal music of
France the Fair.

By this it was breakfast-time. The bonne
set the table, and laid out the simple summer cates
on which the girl usually breakfasted—eggs on
the plate, cream cheese, fruit, plenty of bread-and-
butter, coffee, and a little thin red wine. "If
good papa and Monsieur Philibert should come
in," quoth Amandine, "their beefsteak and
their omelette will be ready for them in five
minutes." There was a stronger wine, too, for
the use of good papa and his friends. Strange
to say, the wine was always kept in a cupboard
on a level with the dwelling-rooms of the Edifice.
They had a cellar down stairs: why didn't they
store their Bordeaux and their cognac there?
Well, Amanda didn't like the notion. Perhaps
she thought the cellar, so near the Seine, was
damp; perhaps she feared that those lodgers,
usually so well behaved, might get up some
night and inebriate themselves on her papa's
potables. And the bare notion of one of those
lodgers roaming about the cellar! Ugh!

By-and-by arrived good papa, and with him
his ancient and constant friend, Monsieur Philibert.
This last was the plumpest, rosiest,
brightest-eyed, whitest-toothed, most contented-
looking man you could wish to see on a summer's
day, or out of the ranks of the twenty-seventh
battalion of the Legion of the Seine, or out of
the members of his own peculiar profession,
which is saying a good deal. Philibert was a
National Guardsman, and, as such, naturally
wore spectacles, and was slightly inclined to
corpulence. He was not quite a carpet warrior,
however. That big bearskin, those
epaulettes of scarlet worsted, those snowy cross-
belts, had shone with distinction at several
barricades, and had loomed large in the fore-
front of the battle, when the Boulevard du
Temple, after Fieschi's horrid attempt on the
king's life, was swept by troops. Philibert
was not quite so angry with the half-crazy
regicide as it would perhaps have beseemed a
loyal man, bourgeois de Paris, and strong
adherent of the order of things and the dynasty of
July, to have shown himself. He spoke of the
murderous Italian, pending his trial and
condemnation, as " le Monsieur." Once he was
heard to allude to him as " le pauvre diable."
You see that Fieschi, with his infernal machine,
although he missed the principal object of his
hatred, and blew off, instead, his own fingers,
and ultimately his own head, yet managed to
kill Marshal Mortier, who, in full uniform, was
riding by the side of Louis Philippe. And did
not the murdered marshal have one of the
grandest of funerals ever seen in Paris—triumphal
car, winged Victories, gilt wreaths, pall of
silver tissue, whole Birnam woods of ostrich
plumes, horses draped in black velvet—every
luxury, in fine? And was not Philibert there?
Not Philibert in the bearskin and red epaulettes
of the civic soldier, but Philibert in full new
glossy black, in plaited and ruffled linen, in
shorts and silk stockings—Philibert with the
cocked-hat known as chapeau bras beneath his
left arm, and a shining ebony truncheon tipped
with silver in his right hand—Philibert with a
dress-sword by his side, a silver chain round
his neck, and silver buckles in his shoes? For
he was also a marshal of France, after a fashion,
and had a right to bear a bâton.

He was, indeed, a master of the ceremonies
attached to the Corporation of Undertakers—to
the Pompes Funèbres—and in that capacity had
conducted some of the most splendid funeral
processions of modern times. The unthinking
and the malicious called him a croque-mort, a
vampire, a ghoul, but Philibert smiled
philosophically at their sneers. The plump and rosy
man was not only contented, but proud of his
profession. " I shall yet live," he would say,
"to conduct the imposing ceremonies incidental
to the interment of the great Napoleon, whose
sacred remains are still detained by his barbarous
and perfidious enemies on the Atlantic rock,
where they slew him. What a funeral that
will be! With the aid of the military force,
the paraphernalia of the garde-meuble, and the
choristers of the Opera, the Pompes Funèbres
shall, please Heaven, far surpass all they have
hitherto done. Funerals of Foy, Manuel, Louis
the Eighteenth, S. A. R. the Duke of Berry—
bah! those little parades of the Theatre shall all
be thrown into the shade. When we file down the
Champs Elysées on our way to the Invalids,
something shall be seen." Monsieur Philibert was an
artist. Thus, though he half forgave Fieschi for
shooting a marshal of France who could be
sumptuously interred, he professed the utmost horror
and indignation at the fate of the humble workmen
and workwomen, victims to the indiscriminate
massacre caused by the infernal machine.
"Is not the fosse commune—the common ditch
at Montmartre—gorged enough," he would say,
"but that we must strive to choke it still more
with misérables, coffined in white deal with tin-
tacks, and shovelled into the earth at an expense
to the good city of Paris of eight livres seven
sols? And these émeutes, these riots, which, in
my capacity as a member of the civic guard, I
have the honour to assist in quelling. Dites-
moi donc un peu, of what good is it shooting
and bayoneting all these deluded artisans aud
half-starved va nu-pieds? It is nobody's business
to bury them decently, and after cumbering
your register for a time, good papa, what is
there for them but a pit filled with quick lime.
It is inconceivable. Poor people ought not to
die. They should go away somehow, or, at
least, they should save the administration the
trouble of burying them at a tariff which I have
no hesitation in affirming to be indecently
and absurdly low. Why is there not a Ganges
into which the corpses of ces hommes de rien
du tout could be thrown, or a funeral pyre
whereon their bodies could be incinerated? For