dance
upon him. Indifferent, yes, cheerful, was the corpulent minister,
vice-president of the Council, who grasped the cords of the pall firmly
in his powerful hand, accustomed to pound the desk of the tribune, and
seemed to be drawing it forward, in greater haste than the horses and
the hearse to consign to his six feet of earth his enemy of twenty
years' standing, his constant rival, the obstacle to all his ambitions.
The other three dignitaries did not press forward with so much of the
vigor of a led horse, but the long streamers were held listlessly in
their wearied or distraught hands, significantly nerveless. Indifferent
the priests by profession. Indifferent the servants, whom he never
called anything else than "What's-your-name,"[4] and whom he treated
like things. Indifferent, too, was M. Louis, whose last day of servitude
it was--an enfranchised slave rich enough to pay his ransom. Even among
his intimates that freezing coldness had made its way. And yet some of
them were much attached to him. But Cardailhac was too much occupied in
superintending the order and progress of the ceremonial to give way to
the slightest emotion, which was quite foreign to his nature moreover.
Old Monpavon, although he was struck to the heart, would have considered
the slightest crease in his linen breastplate, the slightest bending of
his tall figure, as lamentably bad form, altogether unworthy his
illustrious friend. His eyes remained dry, as sparkling as ever, for the
Funeral Pageant furnishes the tears for state mourning, embroidered in
silver on black cloth. Some one was weeping, however, among the members
of the committee, but that some one was shedding ingenuous tears on his
own account. Poor Nabob, melted by the music and the display, it seemed
to him that he was burying all his fortune, all his ambition for dignity
and renown. And even that was one variety of indifference.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] _Chose_--literally _thing._

In the public the gratification of a gorgeous spectacle, the joy of
making a Sunday of a weekday, dominated every other feeling. As the
procession passed along the boulevards, the spectators on the balconies
almost applauded; here, in the populous quarters, irreverence manifested
itself even more frankly. Coarse chaff, vulgar comments on the dead man
and his doings, with which all Paris was familiar, laughter called forth
by the broad-brimmed hats of the rabbis and the solemn "mugs" of the
council of w