No bodies long exposed at the Morgue could evince less sign of resuscitation than those respectable defuncts! For, indeed, Jackeymo had been less thrifty of his apparel, more profusus sui, than his master.

In the earliest days of their exile, he preserved the decorous habit of dressing for dinner,--it was a respect due to the padrone,--and that habit had lasted till the two habits on which it necessarily depended had evinced the first symptoms of decay; then the evening clothes had been taken into morning wear, in which hard service they had breathed their last.
The doctor, notwithstanding his general philosophical abstraction from such household details, had more than once said, rather in pity to Jackeymo than with an eye to that respectability which the costume of the servant reflects on the dignity of the master, "Giacomo, thou wantest clothes; fit thyself out of mine!" And Jackeymo had bowed his gratitude, as if the donation had been accepted; but the fact was that that same fitting out was easier said than done.

For though-thanks to an existence mainly upon sticklebacks and minnows--both Jackeymo and Riccabocca had arrived at that state which the longevity of misers proves to be most healthful to the human frame,--namely, skin and bone,--yet the bones contained in the skin of Riccabocca all took longitudinal directions; while those in the skin of Jackeymo spread out latitudinally.

And you might as well have made the bark of a Lombardy poplar serve for the trunk of some dwarfed and pollarded oak--in whose hollow the Babes of the Wood could have slept at their ease--as have fitted out Jackeymo from the garb of Riccabocca.
Moreover, if the skill of the tailor could have accomplished that undertaking, the faithful Jackeymo would never have had the heart to avail himself of the generosity of his master.

He had a sort of religious sentiment, too, about those vestments of the padrone.