black, wooden cross, considerably higher than himself, on which was painted, in white letters, this inscription:[Pg 36] [Pg 36] AMERIQUE. A wreath of yellow immortelles, tied to the crosspiece, was interwoven with these spangled letters: and the solemn air of the old man seemed to evidence that they were not meaningless. The hunchback was Lees' principal 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[Pg 37] 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. [Pg 37] Along all the route the folks lifted their hats as the hearse passed 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. Parnasse. They do not deck the cities of the dead abroad as our great sepulchres are adorned. Père la Chaise is famed rather for its inmates than its tombs, and Mont Parnasse 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
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