circumstance that enabled them to hide the dolorous spectacle of the
funeral from the sorrowing Baroness. Isaure and Malvina would not

allow their idolized mother to see their tears.
"While the Requiem was chanted, they diverted her thoughts to the

choice of mourning dresses. While the coffin was placed in the huge,
black and white, wax-besprinkled catafalque that does duty for some

three thousand dead in the course of its career--so I was informed by
a philosophically-minded mute whom I once consulted on a point over a

couple of glasses of petit blanc--while an indifferentpriest mumbling
the office for the dead, do you know what the friends of the departed

were saying as, all dressed in black from head to foot, they sat or
stood in the church? (Here is the picture you ordered.) Stay, do you

see them?
" 'How much do you suppose old d'Aldrigger will leave?' Desroches

asked of Taillefer.--You remember Taillefer that gave us the finest
orgy ever known not long before he died?"

"He was in treaty for practice in 1822," said Couture. "It was a bold
thing to do, for he was the son of a poor clerk who never made more

than eighteen hundred francs a year, and his mother sold stamped
paper. But he worked very hard from 1818 to 1822. He was Derville's

fourth clerk when he came; and in 1819 he was second!"
"Desroches?"

"Yes. Desroches, like the rest of us, once groveled in the poverty of
Job. He grew so tired of wearing coats too tight and sleeves too short

for him, that he swallowed down the law in desperation and had just
bought a bare license. He was a licensed attorney, without a penny, or

a client, or any friends beyond our set; and he was bound to pay
interest on the purchase-money and the cautionary deposit besides."

"He used to make me feel as if I had met a tiger escaped from the
Jardin des Plantes," said Couture. "He was lean and red-haired, his

eyes were the color of Spanish snuff, and his complexion was harsh. He
looked cold and phlegmatic. He was hard upon the widow, pitiless to

the orphan, and a terror to his clerks; they were not allowed to waste
a minute. Learned, crafty, double-faced, honey-tongued, never flying

into a passion, rancorous in his judicial way."
"But there is goodness in him," cried Finot; "he is devoted to his

friends. The first thing he did was to take Godeschal, Mariette's
brother, as his head-clerk."

"At Paris," said Blondet, "there are attorneys of two shades. There is
the honest man attorney; he abides within the province of the law,

pushes on his cases, neglects no one, never runs after business, gives
his clients his honest opinion, and makes them compromise on doubtful

points--he is a Derville, in short. Then there is the starveling
attorney, to whom anything seems good provided that he is sure of

expenses; he will set, not mountains fighting, for he sells them, but
planets; he will work to make the worse appear the better cause, and

take advantage of a technical error to win the day for a rogue. If one
of these fellows tries one of Maitre Gonin's tricks once too often,

the guild forces him to sell his connection. Desroches, our friend
Desroches, understood the full resources of a trade carried on in a

beggarly way enough by poor devils; he would buy up causes of men who
feared to lose the day; he plunged into chicanery with a fixed

determination to make money by it. He was right; he did his business
very honestly. He found influence among men in public life by getting

them out of awkward complications; there was our dear les Lupeaulx,
for instance, whose position was so deeply compromised. And Desroches

stood in need of influence; for when he began, he was anything but
well looked on at the court, and he who took so much trouble to

rectify the errors of his clients was often in trouble himself. See
now, Bixiou, to go back to the subject--How came Desroches to be in

the church?"
" 'D'Aldrigger is leaving seven or eight hundred thousand francs,'

Taillefer answered, addressing Desroches.
" 'Oh, pooh, there is only one man who knows how much THEY are worth,'

put in Werbrust, a friend of the deceased.
" 'Who?'

" 'That fat rogue Nucingen; he will go as far as the cemetery;
d'Aldrigger was his master once, and out of gratitude he put the old

man's capital into his business.'
" 'The widow will soon feel a great difference.'

" 'What do you mean?'
" 'Well, d'Aldrigger was so fond of his wife. Now, don't laugh, people

are looking at us.'
" 'Look here comes du Tillet; he is very late. The epistle is just

beginning.'
" 'He will marry the eldest girl in all probability.'

" 'Is it possible?' asked Desroches; 'why, he is tied more than ever
to Mme. Roguin.'

" 'TIED--he?--You do not know him.'
" 'Do you know how Nucingen and du Tillet stand?' asked Desroches.

" 'Like this,' said Taillefer; 'Nucingen is just the man to swallow
down his old master's capital, and then to disgorge it.'

" 'Ugh! ugh!' coughed Werbrust, 'these churches are confoundedly damp;
ugh! ugh! What do you mean by "disgorge it"?'

" 'Well, Nucingen knows that du Tillet has a lot of money; he wants to
marry him to Malvina; but du Tillet is shy of Nucingen. To a looker-

on, the game is good fun.'
" 'What!' exclaimed Werbrust, 'is she old enough to marry? How quickly

we grow old!'
" 'Malvina d'Aldrigger is quite twenty years old, my dear fellow. Old

d'Aldrigger was married in 1800. He gave some rather fine
entertainments in Strasbourg at the time of his wedding, and

afterwards when Malvina was born. That was in 1801 at the peace of
Amiens, and here are we in the year 1823, Daddy Werbrust! In those

days everything was Ossianized; he called his daughter Malvina. Six
years afterwards there was a rage for chivalry, Partant pour la Syrie

--a pack of nonsense--and he christened his second daughter Isaure.
She is seventeen. So there are two daughters to marry.'

" 'The women will not have a penny left in ten years' time,' said
Werbrust, speaking to Desroches in a confidential tone.

" 'There is d'Aldrigger's man-servant, the old fellow bellowing away
at the back of the church; he has been with them since the two young

ladies were children, and he is capable of anything to keep enough
together for them to live upon,' said Taillefer.

"Dies iroe! (from the minor cannons). Dies illa! (from the
choristers).

" 'Good-day, Werbrust (from Taillefer), the Dies iroe puts me too much
in mind of my poor boy.'

" 'I shall go too; it is too damp in here,' said Werbrust.
"In favilla.

" 'A few halfpence, kind gentlemen!' (from the beggars at the door).
" 'For the expenses of the church!' (from the beadle, with a rattling

clatter of the money-box).
" 'AMEN' (from the choristers).

" 'What did he die of?' (from a friend).
" 'He broke a blood-vessel in the heel' (from an inquisitive wag).

" 'Who is dead?' (from a passer-by).
" 'The President de Montesquieu!' (from a relative).

"The sacristan to the poor, 'Get away, all of you; the money for you
has been given to us; don't ask for any more.' "

"Done to the life!" cried Couture. And indeed it seemed to us that we
heard all that went on in the church. Bixiou imitated everything, even

the shuffling sound of the feet of the men that carried the coffin
over the stone floor.

"There are poets and romancers and writers that say many fine things
abut Parisian manners," continued Bixiou, "but that is what really