“Bah!” cried the wife. “What a fancy you have for staring at old stones.”
They crossed the bridge, and sauntered to the front of the noble old cathedral, where already the hand of improvement was beginning to clear away the houses that surrounded and overshadowed its beauty. Jack Chicot was looking up at the glorious western door, built by Philip Augustus, thickly-wrought with fleurs-de-lys, where in days of old had appeared the sculptured images of all the kings of Judah, shrined in niches of stonework, as delicate as lace or spring foliage. His wife’s eyes roved right and left, and all around, seeking some diversion for a mind prone to weariness, when not stimulated by amusement or dissipation,
“See, my friend,” she cried, suddenly, clutching her husband’s arm. “There is something! Look, what a crowd of people. Is it a procession or an accident?”
“An accident, I think,” answered Chicot, looking down the street facing them, along which a closely packed crowd was hastening, rolling towards them like a mighty wave of black water. “We had better get out of the way.”
“But, no,” cried the wife, eagerly. “If there is something to see, let us see it. Life is not too full of distractions.”
“It may be something unpleasant,” suggested Jack. “I am afraid they are carrying some poor creature to the Morgue.”
“That matters nothing. We may as well see.”
So they waited, and fell in among the hurrying crowd, and heard many voices discussing the thing that had happened, every voice offering a different version of the same ghastly story.
A man had been run over on the Boulevard—a seafaring man from the provinces—knocked down by the horses of a huge wagon. The horses had kicked him, the wheels had gone over his body. “He was dead when they picked him up,” said one. “No, he spoke, and hardly seemed conscious he was hurt,” said another. “He died while they were waiting for the brancard on which to carry him to the hospital,” said a third.
And now they were taking him to the Morgue, the famous dead-house of the city, down by the river yonder. He was being carried in the midst of that dense crowd, which had been gathering ever since the bearers started with their ghastly burden, from the Porte St. Denis, where the accident happened. He was there in the centre of that mass of human life, an awful figure, covered from head to foot, and hidden from all those curious eyes.
Jack and his wife were borne along with the rest, past the great cathedral, down by the river, to the doors of the dead-house.
Here they all came to a stop, no one was allowed to enter save the dead man and his bearers, and three or four sergents de ville.
“We must wait till they have made his toilet,” said La Chicot to her husband, “and then we can go in and see him.”
“What!” cried Jack, “surely you would not wish to look at a piece of shattered humanity. He must be a dreadful sight, poor creature.”
“On the contrary, monsieur,” said someone near them in the crowd. “The poor man’s face was not injured. He is a handsome fellow, tanned by the sun, a seafaring man, a fine fellow.”
“Let go in and see him,” urged La Chicot, and when La Chicot wanted to do a thing she always did it.
So they waited amongst the crowd, close packed still, though about two-thirds of the people had dropped off and gone back to their business or their pleasure; not because they shrank from looking upon death in its most awful aspect; but because the toilet might be long, and the spectacle was not worth the trouble of waiting a weary half hour in the summer sun.
La Chicot waited with a dogged patience which was a part of her character, when she had made up her mind about anything. Jack waited patiently, too; for he was watching the faces in the crowd, and had an artistic delight in studying these various specimens of a somewhat debased humanity. Thus the half-hour wore itself out, the doors were opened, and the crowd poured into the dead-house, just as it would have poured into a theatre or a circus.
There he lay, the newcomer, with the summer light shining on him, a calm figure behind a sheet of glass, a brave, bronzed face, bearded, with strongly-marked brows, and close-cropped black hair, gold rings in the ears, and on one bare arm, the arm which had escaped the wagon wheel, an inscription tattooed in purple and red.
Jack Chicot, after contemplating the dead man’s face with curious interest, fixing the well-marked features in his mind, bent down to look at the tattooed device and inscription.
There were a ship, a rose, and these words, “Dedicated to Saint Anne of Auray.”
The man was doubtless a native of Auray, La Chicot’s birthplace.
Jack turned to remark this to his wife. She was standing close at his elbow, livid as the corpse behind the glass, her face convulsed, big tears rolling down her cheeks.
“Do you know him?” asked Jack. “Is it anyone you remember?”
“No, no!” she sobbed; “but it is too dreadful. Take me away—take me out of this place, or I shall drop down in a fit.”
He hurried her out through the crowd, pushing his way into the open air.
“You overrated your strength of nerve,” he said, vexed at the folly which had exposed her to such a shock. “You should not have a fancy for such horrid sights.”
“I shall be better presently,” answered La Chicot. “It is nothing.”
She was not better presently. She was hysterical all the rest of the day, and at night had no sooner closed her eyes than she started up from her pillow, sobbing violently, and holding her hands before her face.
“Don’t let me see him!” she cried, passionately. “Jack, why are you so cruel as to make me see him? You are holding me against the glass—you are forcing me to look
