"You are having a statue of him made? The devil! it's very majestic!"
"Do you think so?"
"It is only great men who are thus cut out of marble, and at full length; it seems to me, too, that the deceased was a very ordinary personage."
"In fact, his bust would be sufficient."
"Just as you please, Madam," said the sculptor.
"Well, let it be a bust, that's—determined!"
Two months later, the artist, carrying the bust, encountered on the stairs a merry party. The widow, giving her hand to the elegant dandy who had caused the statue of the deceased to be cut down, was on his way to the Mayor's office, where she was about to take a second oath of conjugal fidelity.
If the bust had not been completed, it would willingly have been dispensed with. When, some time later, the artist called for his money, there was an outcry about the price; and it required very little less than a threat of legal proceedings, before the widow, consoled and remarried, concluded by resigning herself to pay for this funeral homage, reduced as it was, to the memory of her departed husband.