of the Obelisk of the Luxor, and the interment of
the patriots of July beneath the Column of the
Place de la Bastille. He had made one in all
these famous crowds, this tranquil old man in the
straw hat, and he always had a book under his
arm, just purchased for seventy-five centimes on
the Quai Voltaire. He had seemingly never
changed save in the article of a pigtail, which he
wore during the Republic and the Empire, and
had cut off soon after the Second Restoration.

This was the crowd. Stay: the gentleman
who shaved poodles, and attended to cats on the
Pont Neuf, had left his stall in the care of an old
woman, and run up just to see what was going on.
His temporary absence from duty was perhaps
explanatory of that "Va en ville" which, on
his signboards, have in our time often mystified
us. Stay, once more. Two or three sergents
de ville, their swords drawn, kept close to the
object which was the nucleus of the throng, and
had drawn it together. Finally, in the rear of
the procession for it was a mobile crowd, and
in penny-a-lining diction might have been called
a cortege there followed leisurely three
well-dressed men, who had breakfasted together that
morning, and, taking a walk afterwards for
recreation, had fallen in with something of the
nature of a spectacle, or show, and were
determined to follow it to the end.

That end was now near. It was the door of
the Edifice. Philibert drew up the window, and
could look right down upon the Something that
was being borne along in the midst of the gazers
and the schoolboy critics. Four men of the
water-side order an order which differs very
slightly from one end of the world to the other
were carrying, by means of straps yoked over
their brawny shoulders, a kind of stretcher or
bier. On it, lay Something about six feet long.
It was entirely covered with some coarse sacking,
from which, as it swayed along, water
dripped pretty freely on the sunny June pavement.
A moment's glance at this Something
beneath the sacking was sufficient to tell you
that what lay there had been human, and was
dead.

"A lodger at last," quoth the guardian,
quietly. " I must go down and see to his
toilette. Will you be one of us, mon gros?
Amanda, my angel, thou wilt amuse Ma'mselle
Lily until I return."

Madame Thomas would have dearly liked to
join the party bound for the basement, but
lacking an invitation, was forced to content
herself with assisting in the consolation of
Lily.

The task was not a very difficult one. The girl
soon forgot the ugly object whose real import
she had by intuition guessed. Then Amanda
played and sang to her again; and, what with
the warbling of the birds and the lively prattle
of her companions, she soon grew comparatively
cheerful.

Not so cheerful, perhaps, as those below who
were making the lodger's toilette, and whistling
over their task.

It was a paradoxical toilette, for, in order to
dress him, they undressed him, and left him
stark. Although, he had had lately a great
deal more water than was good for him—the
excess of fluid had indeed been a proximate
cause of his decease—they had no sooner gotten
him on to his bed of rest, than they set more
water to trickle over him. It is true that to
keep him sweet, they mingled some chloride of
lime with the water. He had need to be kept
sweet, this lodger, for he was drowned as well
as dead.

The crowd, who had been excluded from the
Edifice for half an hour after the admission of
the lodger with his bearers, and who had grown as
impatient as any other crowd—say that waiting
for admission to the pit of a theatre—would
under similar circumstances: the crowd had at
last ingress allowed it. The sight-seers poured
in and saw the show. They came straggling
out by twos and threes soon afterwards. Their
criticisms on the spectacle were various. The
cook said that he must have been a fine-looking
man—bel homme; the schoolboys were of
course delighted. One of the soldiers when he
came out was sick. He said that it was the
cigar which made him feel unwell. The audience
were in the main agreed that the dead man had
not been in the Seine many hours; that he had
been legitimately drowned and not murdered—
notwithstanding an ugly gash on his right
shoulder: which the connoisseurs averred had
been done with the boat-hook with which he had
been fished up; and that he was a foreigner.

Of the three well-dressed men who had
followed the crowd at their leisure, only one
had at first entered the Edifice. It was Jean
Baptiste Constant.

Rataplan had flatly refused to go in. He had
no taste for such horrors, he said.

Franz Stimm promised to enter, on receiving
a report from Constant as to the appearance of
the dead. "I likes a ansom gorps," said the
courier. "It is schrecklich schön, muy
grazioso; but ven he is vets and vonnds, and zmells
bad, he makes mine stomjacks veel queer."

So J. B. Constant went in alone.

He rushed out a minute afterwards with a livid face.

"Come in, both of you!" he cried. "As I
live, I have found him—my old master—the
child's father—Mr. Blunt!"

Francis Blunt, Esquire, stiff and stark, his
soaked and shabby clothes hanging on a peg
behind him, lay, indeed, on a cold slab in the
MOUGUE of Paris.

So there is death in life, and life in death;
and the daughter was alive above, while the
father was dead below; and both should reck
nothing of their meeting or their parting, till all
meet to part no more.

CHAPTER. XXXIX. LILY RUNS AWAY.

THERE was no other way out of it. She
loved, wholly and to desperation, and her love
was hopeless. She felt that she must either die
or go. She was too young, too pure to think of
killing herself. Of hard and bitter trials the