I
THE GARDEN
Monsieur William Dobouziez arranged the funeral of Jacques Paridael in a manner deserving the approbation of his set, and the admiration of modest folk. That he was doing things handsomely could not help but be the opinion of the crowd. He would not have done better for himself. A second class service, but, with the exception of the undertaker's assistants, who was sufficiently experienced to distinguish the slight shading of difference between the first class and the second? A plain chant mass, but no general absolution, for he felt it useless to prolong a ceremony so trying for those concerned and so tedious to the indifferent. So and so many yards of black mourning crape bordered with white, so and so many pounds of yellow wax candles. During his life the late Paridael, poor devil, had never hoped for such obsequies as these.
Forty-five years old, upright, but already becoming grey, nervous, dry and precise, the red ribbon in the buttonhole of his tightly fitting coat. Monsieur William Dobouziez walked behind little Laurent, his ward, the only child of the dead man, who was plunged in an acute and hysterical grief.
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