"Par made, that's one way of putting it!" commented the apprentice, "for
what mourners was there but Ma'm'selle herself, and she quiet as a mice,
and not a teardrop, and all the island necks end to end for look at her,
and you, master, whispering to her: 'The Lord is the Giver and Taker,'
and the Femme de Ballast t'other side, saying 'My dee-ar, my dee-ar, bear
thee up, bear thee up--thee.'"

"And she looking so steady in front of her, as if never was shame about
her--and her there soon to be; and no ring of gold upon her hand, and all
the world staring!" broke in the Master, who, having edged away from the
cholera hammer, was launched upon a theme that stirred his very soul.
"All the world staring, and good reason," he added.

"And she scarce winking, eh?" said the apprentice. "True that--her eyes
didn't feel the cold," said the Master of Burials with a leer, for to his
sight as to that of others, only as boldness had been Guida's bitter
courage, the blank, despairing gaze, coming from eyes that turn their
agony inward.

The apprentice took up the account again, and prepared to read it. The
Master, however, had been roused to a genial theme. "Poor fallen child
of Nature!" said he. "For what is birth or what is looks of virtue like
a summer flower! It is to be brought down by hand of man." He was
warmed to his text. Habit had long made him so much hypocrite, that he
was sentimentalist and hard materialist in one. "Some pend'loque has
brought her beauty to this pass, but she must suffer--and also his time
will come, the sulphur, the torment, the worm that dieth not--and no
Abraham for parched tongue--misery me! They that meet in sin here shall
meet hereafter in burning fiery furnace."