"What about those turnips from Denise Gareau, numskull?" he grunted, in a voice between a sneer and a snort.
The apprentice was unmoved. He sniffed, rubbed his nose with a forefinger, laboriously wrote for a moment, and then added:
Ditto to Madame Denise Gareau for turnips for supper after obs'quies …………………. 10 sols
"Saperlote, leave out the Madame, calf-lugs—, you!"
The apprentice did not move a finger. Obstinacy sat enthroned on him. In a rage, the Master made a snatch at a metal flower-wreath to throw at him. "Shan't! She's my aunt. I knows my duties to my aunt—me," said the apprentice stolidly.
The Master burst out in a laugh of scorn. "Gaderabotin, here's family pride for you! I'll go stick dandelines in my old sow's ear—respe d'la compagnie."
The apprentice was still calm. "If you want to flourish yourself, don't mind me," said he, and picking up the next account, he began reading:
Mademoiselle Landresse, in the matter of the Burial of
the Sieur de Mauprat, to Etienne Mahye, &c. Item—
The first words read by the apprentice had stilled the breaking storm of the Master's anger. It dissolved in a fragrant dew of proud reminiscence, profit, and scandal.
He himself had no open prejudices. He was an official of the public—or so he counted himself—and he very shrewdly knew his duty in that walk of life to which it had pleased Heaven to call him. The greater the notoriety of the death, the more in evidence was the Master and all his belongings. Death with honour was an advantage to him; death with disaster a boon; death with scandal was a godsend. It brought tears of gratitude to his eyes when the death and the scandal were in high places. These were the only real tears he ever shed. His heart was in his head, and the head thought solely of Etienne Mahye. Though he wore an air of sorrow and sympathy in public, he had no more feeling than a hangman. His sympathy seemed to say to the living, "I wonder how soon you'll come into my hands," and to the dead, "What a pity you can only die once—and second-hand coffins so hard to get!"