"What do you mean?"

"I mean that there are people who carry their pride even here.
Now, this Demoiselle Gautier, it appears she lived a bit free, if
you'll excuse my saying so. Poor lady, she's dead now; there's no
more of her left than of them that no one has a word to say
against. We water them every day. Well, when the relatives of the
folk that are buried beside her found out the sort of person she
was, what do you think they said? That they would try to keep her
out from here, and that there ought to be a piece of ground
somewhere apart for these sort of women, like there is for the
poor. Did you ever hear of such a thing? I gave it to them
straight, I did: well-to-do folk who come to see their dead four
times a year, and bring their flowers themselves, and what
flowers! and look twice at the keep of them they pretend to cry
over, and write on their tombstones all about the tears they
haven't shed, and come and make difficulties about their
neighbours. You may believe me or not, sir, I never knew the
young lady; I don't know what she did. Well, I'm quite in love
with the poor thing; I look after her well, and I let her have
her camellias at an honest price. She is the dead body that I
like the best. You see, sir, we are obliged to love the dead, for
we are kept so busy, we have hardly time to love anything else."

I looked at the man, and some of my readers will understand,
without my needing to explain it to them, the emotion which I
felt on hearing him. He observed it, no doubt, for he went on:

"They tell me there were people who ruined themselves over that