redecessor should have occupied his
appointed place.
The first stage of the funeral procession was Notre-Dame; and as the
gorgeous _cortege_ approached the church, all its avenues, save that
which was kept clear by the Swiss Guards, were thronged by the citizens
and artizans of the capital; sounds of weeping and lamentation were to
be heard on every side; yet still, divided between grief and curiosity,
the crowd swept on; and as the last section of the melancholy procession
disappeared beneath the venerable portals of the cathedral, its vast
esplanade was alive with earnest and eager human beings, who, fearful of
exclusion from the interior of the building, pressed rudely against each
other, overthrowing the weak and battling with the strong in their
anxiety to assist at the awful and solemn ceremony which was about to
be enacted.
Only a few moments had consequently elapsed ere a dense mass of the
people choked almost to suffocation the gothic arches and the nave of
the sacred edifice, while the aisles were peopled by the more exalted
individuals who had composed the funeral procession. Upwards of three
thousand nobles, and a great number of ladies, all clad in mourning
dresses, and attended by their pages and equerries, blended their
melancholy voices with the responses of the canons of the cathedral; the
bishops of the adjacent sees, and the archbishops in their rich raiment
of velvet and cloth of silver, carried in their hands tapers of perfumed
wax; Oriental myrrh and aloes burned in golden censers, and veiled the
lofty dome with a light and diaphanous vapour which gave an unearthly
aspect to the building; the organ pealed forth its deep and thrilling
tones; and amid this scene of excitement, splendour, and suffering, the
Cardinal de Gondy celebrated the mass, and the Bishop of Aire delivered
the funeral oration. The coffin was then raised, and the crowd,
hurriedly escaping from the church, once more spread itself over the
neighbouring streets until the procession should again have formed;
after which all this immense concourse of people accompanied the body of
their beloved monarch to St. Lazare, where the clergy halted and
returned to Paris; while the nobles who were to escort the mortuary-car
to St. Denis, and who had hitherto followed it on foot, either mounted
on horseback, or entered their carriages, in order to reach the Leaning
Cross at the same time as the corpse.
There, the grand prior and the monks
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