the official notice, 'Missing.' Imagine the suspense, the anxiety! For
weeks she continued to hope against hope, but at last she heard that
his body had been found. It had been recognised by the clothes, the
identity disc (or whatever you call it), and the stoutness, for, alas,
the unfortunate gentleman's head had been nearly blown away by a shell
and was quite unrecognisable. Poor Madame de Blanchet's grief was
terrible to witness when they brought her his sad clothing, with the
embroidered initials upon it worked by her own hand. One thing she
insisted on, and that was that his body should be buried at A----, in
the family vault of the de Blanchets, who, as I have said before, are
very distinguished people. "This meant endless red tape, as you may
imagine, and endless correspondence with the authorities, and delays
and vexations, but finally she got her wish, and the funeral was the
most magnificent ever witnessed in that part of the world. You should
have seen the '_faire part_,'" said Madame Marcot, alluding to the
black-bordered mourning intimations sent out in France, inscribed with
the names of every individual member of the family concerned, from the
greatest down to the most insignificant and obscure. "Several pages, I
assure you; and everybody came. The cortège was a mile long. M. l'Abbé
Colaix officiated; there was a full choral mass; and she got her
second cousin once removed, M. Aristide Gérant, who, as you know,
is Director of the College of Music at A----, to compose a requiem
specially for the occasion; and he did not do it for nothing, you may
believe me. In fine, a first-class funeral. But, as she said, when
some of her near relations, including her stepmother, who is not of
the most generous, remonstrated with her on the score of the expense,
'I would wish to honour my dear husband in death as I honoured him in
life.'

"After it was all over she had a magnificent marble monument erected