that dancing step excited
by the smell of powder and the pageantry of standards. In this case,
Mora's great brougham, that "C-spring" which used to bear him to
fashionable or political gatherings, took the place of that companion
in victory, its panels draped with black, its lamps veiled in long
streamers of light crape, floating to the ground with undulating
feminine grace. These veiled lamps constituted a new fashion for
funerals--the supreme "chic" of mourning; and it well became this dandy
to give a last lesson in elegance to the Parisians, who flocked to his
obsequies as to a "Longchamps" of death.

Three more masters of ceremony; then came the impassive official
procession, always the same for marriages, deaths, baptisms, openings
of Parliament, or receptions of sovereigns, the interminable cortege of
glittering carriages, with large windows and showy liveries bedizened
with gilt, which passed through the midst of the dazzled people, to
whom they recalled fairy-tales, Cinderella chariots, while evoking those
"Oh's!" of admiration that mount and die away with the rockets on the
evenings of firework displays. And in the crowd there was always to be
found some good-natured policeman, some learned little grocer sauntering
round on the lookout for public ceremonies, ready to name in a loud
voice all the people in the carriages, as they defiled past, with their
regulation escorts of dragoons, cuirassiers, or Paris guards.

First the representatives of the Emperor, the Empress and all the
Imperial family; after these, in the hierarchic order, cunningly
elaborated, and the least infraction of which might have been the cause
of grave conflicts between the various departments of the State--the
members of the Privy Council, the Marshals, the Admirals, the High
Chancellor of the Legion of Honour; then the Senate, the Legislative
Assembly, the Council of State, the whole organization of the law and of
the university, the costumes, the ermine, the headgear of which took
you back to the days of old Paris--an air of something stately and
antiquated, out of date in our sceptical epoch of the workman's blouse
and the dress-coat.

Felicia, to avoid her thoughts, voluntarily fixed her eyes upon this
monotonous defile, exasperating in its length; and little by little a
torpor stole over her, as if on a rainy day she had been turning over
the leaves of an album of engravings, a history of official costumes
from the most remote times