elf. Poor Nabob! softened by that music and splendour, it seemed to
him that he was burying all his ambitions of glory and dignity. And his
was but one more variety of indifference.

Among the public, the enjoyment of a fine spectacle, the pleasure of
turning a week-day into a Sunday, dominated every other sentiment.
Along the line of the boulevards, the spectators on the balconies almost
seemed disposed to applaud; here, in the populous districts, irreverence
was still more frankly manifest. Jests, blackguardly wit at the expense
of the dead man and his doings, known to all Paris, laughter raised by
the tall hats of the rabbis, the pass-word of the council experts, all
were heard in the air between two rolls of the drum. Poverty, forced
labour, with its feet in the wet, wearing its blouse, its apron, its
cap raised from habit, with sneering chuckle watched this inhabitant of
another sphere pass by, this brilliant duke, severed now from all his
honours, who perhaps while living had never paid a visit to that end of
the town. But there it is. To arrive up yonder, where everybody has to
go, the common route must be taken, the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, the Rue
de la Roquette as far as that great gate where the _octroi_ is collected
and the infinite begins. And well! it does one good to see that lordly
persons like Mora, dukes, ministers, follow the same road towards
the same destination. This equality in death consoles for many of the
injustices of life. To-morrow bread will seem less dear, wine better,
the workman's tool less heavy, when he will be able to say to himself
as he rises in the morning, "That old Mora, he has come to it like the
rest!"

The procession still went on, more fatiguing even than lugubrious. Now
it consisted of choral societies, deputations from the army and the
navy, officers of all descriptions, pressing on in a troop in advance
of a long file of empty vehicles--mourning-coaches, private
carriages--present for reasons of etiquette. Then the troops followed
in their turn, and into the sordid suburb, that long Rue de la Roquette,
already swarming with people as far as eye could reach, there plunged
a whole army, foot-soldiers, dragoons, lancers, carabineers, heavy guns
with their great mouths in the air, ready to bark, making pavement
and windows tremble, but not able to drown the rolling of the drums--a
sinister and savage rolling which suggested to Felicia's imagination
some funeral of an African c