Bohemian Days Part 3

The coffin lay upon a draped table, and festoons of c.r.a.pe threw phantom shadows upon the soiled velvet covering. Each pa.s.sing pedestrian and cabman took off his hat a moment. The Southern Colony were in the landlady's bureau enjoying a lunch and liquor, and precisely at three o'clock they came down stairs, not more dilapidated than usual, while at the same moment the munic.i.p.al hea.r.s.e drove up, attended by one _cocher_ and two _croquemorts_.[D]

[Footnote D: Literally, "parasites of death."]

The hea.r.s.e was a cheap charity affair, furnished by the _Maire_ of the _arrondiss.e.m.e.nt_, though it was sprucely painted and decked with funeral cloth. The driver wore a huge black chapeau, a white cotton cravat, and thigh-boots, which, standing up stiffly as he sat, seemed to engulf him to the ears.

When the _croquemorts_, in a business way, lifted the velvet from the coffin, it was seen to be constructed of strips of deal merely, unpainted, and not thicker than a Malaga raisin box.

There was some fear that it would fall apart of its own fragility, but the chief _croquemort_ explained politely that such accidents never happened.

"We have entombed four of them to-day," he said; "see how nicely we shall lift the fifth one."

There was, indeed, a certain sleight whereby he slung it across his shoulder, but no reason in the world for tossing it upon the hea.r.s.e with a slam. They covered its nakedness with velvet, and the _cocher_, having taken a cigar from his pocket, and looking much as if he would like to smoke, put it back again sadly, cracked his whip, and the cortege went on. The _croquemorts_ kept a little way ahead, sauntering upon the sidewalk, and their cloaks and oil-cloth hats protected them from a drizzling rain, which now came down, to the grief of the mourners, walking in the middle of the street behind the body. They were seven in number, Messrs. Plade, Pisgah and Simp, going together, and apparently a trifle the worse for the lunch; Freckle followed singly, having been told to keep at a distance to render the display more imposing; the landlady and her niece went arm in arm after, and behind them trode a little old hunchback gentleman, neatly clothed, and bearing in his hand a black, wooden cross, considerably higher than himself, on which was painted, in white letters, this inscription:

CHRISTOPHER LEES, CAROLINA DU NORD, eTATS CONFeDeRE AMERIQUE.

AGE VINGT-QUATRE.

A wreath of yellow immortelles, tied to the crosspiece, was interwoven with these spangled letters:

"R-E-G-R-E-T-S;"

and the solemn air of the old man seemed to evidence that they were not meaningless.

The hunchback was Lees' princ.i.p.al creditor. He kept a small restaurant, where the deceased had been supplied for two years, and his books showed indebtedness of twenty-eight hundred francs, not a sou of which he should ever receive. He could ill afford to lose the money, and had known, indeed, that he should never be paid, a year previous to the demise. But the friendlessness of the stranger had touched his heart.

Twice every day he sent up a basket of food, which was always returned empty, and every Sunday climbed the long stairway with a bottle of the best wine--but never once said, "Pay my bill."

Here he was at the last chapter of exile, still bearing his creditor's cross.

"Give the young man's friends a lunch," he had said to the landlady: "I will make it right;"--and in the cortege he was probably the only honest mourner.

Not we, who know Frenchmen by caricature merely, as volatile, fickle, deceitful, full of artifice, should sit in judgment upon them. He has the least heart of all who thinks that there is not some heart everywhere! The charity which tarrieth long and suffereth much wrong, has been that of the Parisians of the Latin Quarter, during the American war.

Along all the route the folks lifted their hats as the hea.r.s.e pa.s.sed by, and so, through slush and mist and rain, the little company kept straight toward the barriers, and turned at last into the great gate of the cemetery of Mt. Parna.s.se.

They do not deck the cities of the dead abroad as our great sepulchres are adorned.

Pere la Chaise is famed rather for its inmates than its tombs, and Mont Parna.s.se and Monte Martre, the remaining places of interment, are even forbidding to the mind and the eye.

A gate-keeper, in semi-military dress, sounded a loud bell as the hea.r.s.e rolled over the curb, and when they had taken an aisle to the left, with maple trees on either side, and vistas of mean-looking vaults, a corpulent priest, wearing a cape and a white ap.r.o.n, and attended by a civil a.s.sistant of most villainous physiognomy, met the cortege and escorted it to its destination.

This was the _fosse commune_--in plain English, the _common trench_--an open lot adjacent to the cemetery, appropriated to bodies interred at public expense, and presenting to the eye a spectacle which, considered either with regard to its quaintness or its dreariness, stood alone and unrivalled.

Nearest the street the ground had long been occupied, trench parallel with trench, filled to the surface level, sodded green, and each grave marked by a wooden cross. There was a double layer of bodies beneath, lying side by side; no margin could of course be given at the surface; the thickly planted crosses, therefore, looked, at a little distance, like a great waste of heath or bramble, broken now and then by a dwarf cedar, and hung to the full with flowers and tokens. The width of the trenches was that of the added height of two full-grown men, and the length a half mile perhaps; a narrow pa.s.sage-way separated them, so that, however undistinguishable they appeared, each grave could be indentified and visited.

Close observation might have found much to cheer this waste of flesh, this economy of s.p.a.ce; but to this little approaching company the scene was of a kind to make death more terrible by a.s.sociation.

A rough wall enclosed the flat expanse of charnel, over which the scattered houses of the barriers looked widowed through their mournful windows; and now and then a crippled crone, or a bereaved old pauper, hobbled to the roadway and shook her white hairs to the rain.

It seemed a long way over the boggy soil to the newly opened trench, where the hea.r.s.e stopped with its wheels half-sunken, and the chief _croquemort_, without any ado, threw the coffin over his shoulder and walked to the place of sepulture. Five _fossoyeurs_, at the remote end of the trench, were digging and covering, as if their number rather than their work needed increase, and a soldier in blue overcoat, whose hands were full of papers, came up at a commercial pace, and cried:

"_Corps trente-deux!_"

Which corresponded to the figures on the box, and to the number of interments for the day.

The delvers made no pause while the priest read the service, and the clods fell faster than the rain. The box was nicely mortised against another previously deposited, and as there remained an interstice between it and that at its feet, an infant's coffin made the s.p.a.ce complete.

The Latin service was of all recitations the most slovenly and contemptuous; the priest might have been either smiling or sleeping; for his very red face appeared to have nothing in common with his scarcely moving lips; and the a.s.sistant looked straight at the trench, half covetously, half vindictively, as if he meant to turn the body out of the box directly, and run away with the grave-clothes. It took but two minutes to run through the text; the holy water was dashed from the hyssop; and the priest, with a small shovel, threw a quant.i.ty of clods after it. "_Requiescat in pace!_" he cried, like one just awakened, and now for the first time the grave-diggers ceased; they wanted the customary fee, _pour boire_.

The exiles never felt so dest.i.tute before; not a sou could be found in the Colony. But the little hunchback stepped up with the cross, and gave it to the chief _fossoyeur_, dropping a franc into his hand; each of the women added some sous, and the younger one quietly tied a small round token of bra.s.s to the wood, which she kissed thrice; it bore these words:

"_A mon ami._"

"A little more than kin and less than kind!" whispered Andy Plade, who knew what such souvenirs meant, in Paris.

The Colony went away disconsolate; but the little hunchback stopped on the margin, and looked once more into the pit where the box was fast disappearing.

"Pardon our debts, _bon Dieu!_" he said, "as we pardon our debtors."

Shall we who have followed this funeral be kind to the stranger that is within our gates? The quiet old gentleman standing so gravely over the _fosse commune_ might have attracted more regard from the angels than that Iron Duke who once looked down upon the sarcophagus of his enemy in the Hotel des Invalides.

And so Lees was at rest--the master's only son, the heir to lands and houses, and servants, and hopes. He had escaped the bullet, but also that honor which a soldier's death conferred--and thus, abroad and neglected, had existed awhile upon the charity of strangers, to expire of his own wickedness, and accept, as a boon, this place among the bones of the wretched.

How beat the hearts which wait for the strife to be done and for him to return! The field-hands sleep more honored in their separate mounds beneath the pine trees. The landlady's daughter may come sometimes to fasten a flower upon his cross; but, like that cross, her sorrow will decay, and Master Lees will mingle with common dust, pa.s.sing out of the memory of Europe--ay! even of the Southern Colony.

How bowed and wounded they threaded the way homeward, those young men, whom the world, in its bated breath, had called rich and fortunate! Now that they thought it over, how absurd had been this gambling venture!

They should lose every sou. They had, for a blind chance, exhausted the patience of their creditors, and made away with their last collateral--their last crust, and bed, and drink.

"I wish," said Simp, bitterly, "that I had been born one of my mother's n.i.g.g.e.rs. Bigad! a cabin, a wood fire, corn meal and a pound of pork per diem, would keep me like a duke next winter."

Here they stopped at Simp's hotel, and, as he was afraid to enter alone, the loss of his baggage being detected, the Colony consented to ascend to his chamber.

"Monsieur Simp," said the fierce concierge, "here is a letter, the last which I shall ever receive for you! You will please pay my bill to-night, or I shall go to the office of the _prud'homme_; you are of the _canaille_, sir! Where are your effects?"

"Whoop!" yelled Mr. Simp, in the landlady's face. "Yah-ah-ah! hoora ah-ah! three cheers! we have news of our venture! This is a telegram!"

"WISBADEN, Oct. 30.

"The system wins! To-day and yesterday I took seven thousand one hundred francs. I have selected the 4th of November to break the bank.

"AUBURN RISQUE."

VI.

THE OLD REVELRY REVIVED.

The Colony would have shouted over Master Lees' coffin at the receipt of such intelligence. They gave a genuine American cheer, nine times repeated, with the celebrated "tiger" of the Texan Rangers, as it had been reported to them. Mr. Simp read the dispatch to the concierge, who brightened up, begged his pardon, and hoped that he would forget words said in anger.