“The Master’s sick of a squinzy,” grunted the centenier. “So hatchet-face and bundle-o’-nails there brings dust to dust, amen.”
All turned now to the Undertaker’s Apprentice, a grim, saturnine figure with his grey face, protuberant eyes, and obsequious solemnity, in which lurked a callous smile. The burial of the great, the execution of the wicked, were alike to him. In him Fate seemed to personify life’s revenges, its futilities, its calculating ironies. The flag-draped coffin was just about to pass, and the fanatical barber harked back to Philip. “They say it was all empty honours with him afore he died abroad.”
“A full belly’s a full belly if it’s only full of straw,” snapped Manon Moignard.
“Who was it brought him home?” asked the jailer. “None that was born on Jersey, but two that lived here,” remarked Maitre Damian, the schoolmaster from St. Aubins.
“That Chevalier of Champsavoys and the other Duc de Bercy,” interposed the centenier.
Maitre Damian tapped his stick upon the ground, and said oracularly: “It is not for me to say, but which is the rightful Duke and which is not, there is the political question!”
“Pardi, that’s it,” answered the centenier. “Why did Detricand Duke turn Philip Duke out of duchy, see him killed, then fetch him home to Jersey like a brother? Ah, man pethe benin, that’s beyond me!
“Those great folks does things their own ways; oui-gia,” remarked the jailer.
“Why did Detricand Duke go back to France?” asked Maitre Damian, cocking his head wisely; “why did he not stay for obsequies—he?”
“That’s what I say,” answered the jailer, “those great folks does things their own ways.”