_"Petit bonhomme vit encore!"_

And he, in whose hand the spark becomes extinct, has to pay forfeit and
retire--"Helas! petit bonhomme n'est plus! ... Pauv' petit bonhomme!"

Ever thus may a little live spark of your own individual consciousness,
when the full, quick flame of your actual life here below is
extinguished, be handed down mildly incandescent to your remotest
posterity. May it never quite go out--it need not! May you ever be able
to say of yourself, from generation to generation, "Petit bonhomme vit
encore!" and still keep one finger at least in the pleasant earthly pie!

And, reader, remember so to order your life on earth that the memory of
you (like that of Gatienne, la belle Verriere de Verny le Moustier) may
smell sweet and blossom in the dust--a memory pleasant to recall--to
this end that its recallings and its recallers may be as numerous as
filial love and ancestral pride can make them....

And oh! looking _backward_ (as _we_ did), be tender to the failings of
your forbears, who little guessed when alive that the secrets of their
long buried hearts should one day be revealed to _you_! Their faults are
really your own, like the faults of your innocent, ignorant childhood,
so to say, when you did not know better, as you do now; or will
soon, thanks to

_"Le Chant du Triste Commensal!"_

* * * * *

Wherefore, also, beware and be warned in time, ye tenth transmitters of