What's that to make a fuss about ?" "Fig of Eden," muttered Jules Marmotte, with one eye on Jeanne, "any fool could saw a better-looking thing out of ice!" "Fish," said fat Caroche the butcher, "that Francois has a rattle in his capote.

He'd spend his time better chipping bones on my meat-block." But Jeanne could not bear this--the greasy whopping butcher-man! "What, what, the messy stupid Caroche, who can't write his name," she said in a fury; "the sausage-potted Caroche, who doesn't remember that Francois Lagarre made his brother's tombstone, and charged him nothing for the verses he wrote for it, nor for the Agnus Dei he carved on it! No, Caroche does not remember his brother Ba'tiste the fighter, as brave as Caroche is a coward! He doesn't remember the verse on Ba'tiste's tombstone, does he ?" Francois heard this speech, and his eyes lighted tenderly as he looked at Jeanne: he loved this fury of defence and championship.

Some one in the crowd turned to him and asked him to say the verses.

At first he would not; but when Caroche said that it was only his fun, that he meant nothing against Francois, the young man recited the words slowly--an epitaph on one who was little better than a prize-fighter, a splendid bully.
Leaning a hand against the white shaft of the Patriot's Memory, he said: "Blows I have struck, and blows a-many taken, Wrestling I've fallen, and I've rose up again; Mostly I've stood-- I've had good bone and blood; Others went down, though fighting might and main.
Now death steps in-- Death the price of sin.
The fall it will be his; and though I strive and strain, One blow will close my eyes, and I shall never waken." "Good enough for Ba'tiste," said Duclosse the mealman.
The wave of feeling was now altogether with Francois, and presently he walked away with Jeanne Marchand and her mother, and the crowd dispersed.

Jeanne was very happy for a few hours, but in the evening she was unhappy, for she saw Francois going towards the house of the Seigneur; and during many weeks she was still more unhappy, for every three or four days she saw the same thing.
Meanwhile Francois worked as he had never before worked in his life.
Night and day he was shut in his shop, and for two months he came with no epitaphs for the Cure, and no new tombstones were set up in the graveyard.