to
take a place in the vault of these vanished princes, whose ranks are no
longer crowded, and which crime has been more prompt to scatter than
has Death been to fill them; also the coffin of Louise de Vaudemont,
wife of Henry III., the queen who was buried in the Church of the
Capucins, Place Vendome, and whose remains escaped profanation in 1793.
In this same vault were also two little coffins, those of a daughter
and a son of the Duke and Duchess of Berry, who died, one in 1817, the
other in 1818, immediately after birth, and the coffin of their father,
assassinated the 13th of February, 1820, on leaving the Opera. Such
were the companions in burial of Louis XVIII.

IV

THE FUNERAL OF LOUIS XVIII

Louis XVIII. died the 16th of September, 1824, at the Chateau of the
Tuileries. His body remained there until the 23d of September, when, to
the sound of a salvo of one hundred and one guns, it was borne to the
Church of Saint-Denis. The coffin remained exposed in this basilica
within a chapelle ardente, to the 24th of October, the eve of the day
fixed for the obsequies, and during all this time the church was filled
with a crowd of the faithful, belonging to all classes of society, who
gathered from Paris and all the surrounding communes, to render a last
homage to the old King. Sunday, 24th of October, at two o'clock in the
afternoon, the body was transferred from the chapelle ardente to the
catafalque prepared to receive it. Then the vespers and the vigils of
the dead were sung, and the Grand Almoner, clad in his pontifical
robes, officiated. The next day, Monday, the 25th of October, the
services of burial took place.

The Dauphin and Dauphiness left the Tuileries at 10:30 A.M., to be
present at the funeral ceremony. In conformity with etiquette, Charles
X. was not present. He remained at the Tuileries with the Duchess of
Berry, with whom he heard a requiem Mass in the chapel of the Chateau
at eleven o'clock. The Duchess was thus spared a painful spectacle.
With what emotion would she not have seen opened the crypt in which she
believed she would herself be laid, and which was the burial place of
her assassinated husband and of her two children, dead so soon after
their birth.

The ceremony commences in the antique necropolis. The interior of the
church is hung all with black to the spring of the arches, where
fleurs-de-lis in gold are relieved against the funeral hangings. The
light of day, wholly shut