Do not let her have any thought for me." And later, when the gods gave me five minutes alone with Lucille herself-- "You must not," she said, her face drawn and white, her lips quivering, "you must not let mother think that this is more than I can bear.

It falls heavier upon her." I blundered on somehow during those two days, making, no doubt, a hundred mistakes; for what comfort could I offer?
What pretence could I make to understand the feelings of these ladies?
My task was not so difficult as I had anticipated in regard to the grim coffin lying at Passy.

To spare the other, both ladies agreed with me separately that the Vicomte should be buried from Passy as quietly as possible, and Lucille overlooked the fact that the suggestion came from such an unwelcome source as myself.
So, amid the wild excitement of July, 1870, we laid Charles Albert Malaunay, Vicomte de Clericy, to rest among his ancestors in the little church of Senneville, near Nevers.

The war fever was at its height, and all France convulsed with passionate hatred for the Prussian.
It is not for one who has found his truest friends--ay, and his keenest enemies--in France to say aught against so great and gifted a people.

But it seems, as I look back now, that the French were ripe in 1870 for one of those strokes by which High Heaven teaches nations from time to time through the world's history that human greatness is a small affair.
There are no people so tolerant of folly as the Parisians.