Bohemian Days | Page 8

more. He wins, and lies. At his side stands beautiful Sin, forgetting its guilt and coquetry for its avarice. The pale defaulter from over the sea hazards like one whose treasure is a burden upon his neck, and the rou��--blank, emotionless, remorseless--doubling at every loss, walks penniless away to dinner with a better appetite than he who saves a nation or dies for a truth.
The daintily dressed coupeurs are in their chairs, eyeless, but omniscient; the ball goes heedlessly, slaying or anointing where it stays, and the gold as it is raked up clinks and glistens, as if it struck men's hearts and found them as hard and sounding.
Mr. Risque advanced to the end of the table, and stood motionless a little while, drinking it all into his passionless eyes, which, like sponges, absorbed whatever they saw, but nothing revealed. At last his right hand dropped softly to his vest pocket, as though it had some interest in deceiving his left hand.
Apparently unconscious of the act, the right hand next slid over the table edge, and silently deposited a five-franc piece upon the black compartment.
"Whiz-z-z-z" started the ball from the fingers of the coupeurs--"click" dropped the ball into a black department of the board; "clink! tingle!" cried the money, changing hands; but not a word said Auburn Risque, standing like a stalagmite with his eyes upon ten francs.
"Whiz-z-z!"--"click!" "click!" "tingle!"
Did he see the fifteen francs at all, half trance-like, half corpse-like, as he stood, waiting for the third revolution, and waiting again, and again, and again?
His five francs have grown to be a hundred; his cold hand falls freezingly upon them; five francs replace the hundred he took away--"Whizz!" goes the ball; "click!" stops the ball; the coupeur seizes Mr. Risque's five francs, and Mr. Risque walks away like a somnambulist.

V.
BURIED IN THE COMMON DITCH.
It would have been a strange scene for an American public, the street corridor of the lofty house near the church of Saint Sulpice, on the funeral afternoon.
The coffin lay upon a draped table, and festoons of crape threw phantom shadows upon the soiled velvet covering. Each passing pedestrian and cabman took off his hat a moment. The Southern Colony were in the landlady's bureau enjoying a lunch and liquor, and precisely at three o'clock they came down stairs, not more dilapidated than usual, while at the same moment the municipal hearse drove up, attended by one cocher and two croquemorts.[D]
[Footnote D: Literally, "parasites of death."]
The hearse was a cheap charity affair, furnished by the Maire of the arrondissement, though it was sprucely painted and decked with funeral cloth. The driver wore a huge black chapeau, a white cotton cravat, and thigh-boots, which, standing up stiffly as he sat, seemed to engulf him to the ears.
When the croquemorts, in a business way, lifted the velvet from the coffin, it was seen to be constructed of strips of deal merely, unpainted, and not thicker than a Malaga raisin box.
There was some fear that it would fall apart of its own fragility, but the chief croquemort explained politely that such accidents never happened.
"We have entombed four of them to-day," he said; "see how nicely we shall lift the fifth one."
There was, indeed, a certain sleight whereby he slung it across his shoulder, but no reason in the world for tossing it upon the hearse with a slam. They covered its nakedness with velvet, and the cocher, having taken a cigar from his pocket, and looking much as if he would like to smoke, put it back again sadly, cracked his whip, and the cortege went on. The croquemorts kept a little way ahead, sauntering upon the sidewalk, and their cloaks and oil-cloth hats protected them from a drizzling rain, which now came down, to the grief of the mourners, walking in the middle of the street behind the body. They were seven in number, Messrs. Plade, Pisgah and Simp, going together, and apparently a trifle the worse for the lunch; Freckle followed singly, having been told to keep at a distance to render the display more imposing; the landlady and her niece went arm in arm after, and behind them trode a little old hunchback gentleman, neatly clothed, and bearing in his hand a black, wooden cross, considerably higher than himself, on which was painted, in white letters, this inscription:
CHRISTOPHER LEES, CAROLINA DU NORD, ��TATS CONF��D��RE AMERIQUE. AGE VINGT-QUATRE.
A wreath of yellow immortelles, tied to the crosspiece, was interwoven with these spangled letters:
"R-E-G-R-E-T-S;"
and the solemn air of the old man seemed to evidence that they were not meaningless.
The hunchback was Lees' principal creditor. He kept a small restaurant, where the deceased had been supplied for two years, and his books showed indebtedness of twenty-eight hundred francs, not a sou of which he should ever receive. He could ill