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It wasn't so long ago that we were working for three sous a line." And while I luxuriated under a blossoming Judas-tree which I saw in the garden, Miraz, at ease in his home, had slipped into his working-vest, put on his slippers, and, lying on his sofa, caught little Helen in his arms to toss her in the air "Houp la! Houp la!"

At that time my hair was archaic enough in length to grease the collar of my coat. Thus we were made to understand each other, and Louis Miraz soon took me to his attic-room in the Rue des Quatre-Vents, where he dragged two thousand alexandrines over me. For Miraz wrote no more verse.

No sooner had we opened the door of the garden than a young dog frisked about our feet. "Down, Gavroche! He will soil your clothes." But at the sound of the bell Madame Miraz appeared at the steps with her little daughter in her arms. An imposing and beautiful blond, her well-moulded figure wrapped in a blue gown. "Put on a plate more. I've an old comrade with me."

I knew the poet Louis Miraz very well, in the old times in the Latin Quarter, where we used to take our meals together at a crémerie on the Rue de Seine, kept by an old Polish woman whom we nicknamed the Princess Chocolawska, on account of the enormous bowl of créme and chocolate which she exposed daily in the show-window of her shop.

Smoke away; that doesn't disturb me," he added, seeing me put my cigar one side, his cough sounding like a death-rattle. I tried to find encouraging words. I talked with him, holding him by the hand and patting him affectionately on the shoulder; but my voice had in my own ears the empty hollowness of deceit, and Miraz, looking at me, seemed to pity my efforts. I was silent.

We took our coffee in the study they intended to furnish the salon very soon with the price of a story to be published by Levy then, as the evening was cool, a fire of sticks and twigs was built, and while we smoked, Miraz and I, recalling old memories, the mistress of the house, holding on her knees little Helen, now ready for bed, made her repeat "Our Father" and "Hail Mary," which the little one lisped, rubbing her little feet together before the warm flame.

Yes, that he might leave bread for those two women. The curé does not dream that he is blessing a suicide. But what of it, my good fellow? Miraz is in the paradise of the brave. The details of such a death. Eh? It is tougher than the passage of the Bridge of Arcole."

I do not remember ever to have had a more perfect impression of contentment. We dined pleasantly two good courses, that was all; a dinner without pretence, where we served ourselves with the pepper-mill. The charming Madame Miraz presided with her bright smile, having her child by her side in a high-chair.

It was not Madame Miraz she was absent it was Helen who received me, Helen, who had grown to be a great girl of fourteen, with an awkward manner. She opened for me the door of her father's study, and brusquely lifting her great black eyelashes, turned on me a timid and distressed glance.

Suddenly, as the priest began his Latin prayers, Doctor Arnould seized me by the arm and whispered in my ear, "You know that he killed himself?" I looked at him with astonishment. But he pointed to the group in black, composed of Madame Miraz and her daughter, who were sobbing under their long veils and clasping each other in a tragic embrace, and he added, "For them.