"Now, if you were wise, sir, since you are inclined to give yourself up quietly to grief, you would find some one to act for you—"
"As you are thinking of raising a magnificent monument to the memory of your friend, sir, you have only to leave it all to me; I will undertake—"
"What is all this? What is all this?" asked La Sauvage. "Has M. Schmucke ordered something? Who may you be?"
"I represent the firm of Sonet, my dear madame, the biggest monumental stone-masons in Paris," said the person in black, handing a business-card to the stalwart Sauvage.
"Very well, that will do. Some one will go with you when the time comes; but you must not take advantage of the gentleman's condition now. You can quite see that he is not himself——"
The agent led her out upon the landing.
"If you will undertake to get the order for us," he said confidentially, "I am empowered to offer you forty francs."
Mme. Sauvage grew placable. "Very well, let me have your address," said she.
Schmucke meantime being left to himself, and feeling the stronger for the soup and bread that he had been forced to swallow, returned at once to Pons' rooms, and to his prayers. He had lost himself in the fathomless depths of sorrow, when a voice sounding in his ears drew him back from the abyss of grief, and a young man in a suit of black returned for the eleventh time to the charge, pulling the poor, tortured victim's coatsleeve until he listened.
"Sir!" said he.