"Daphnè! Daphnè! I love you! I will never leave you! I will live or die with you!"
* * * * *
It was fifty years after that day, that one evening, during a brilliant supper in the Rue St. Dominique, Gentil Bernard, who was the life of the company, announced the death of an original, who had ordered a broken stick to be buried along with him.
"He is Monsieur de Langevy," said Fontenelle. "He was forced against his inclination to marry the dashing Clotilde de Langevy, who eloped so shamefully with one of the Mousquetaires. M. de Langevy had been desperately attached to Bribri Deshoulieres, and this broken stick was a crook they had cut during their courtship on the banks of the Lignon. The Last Shepherd is dead, gentlemen—we must go to his funeral."
"And what became of Bribri Deshoulieres?" asked a lady of the party.
"I have been told she died very young in a convent in the south," replied Fontenelle; "and the odd thing is, that, when they were burying her, they found a crook attached to her horse-hair tunic."
* * * * *