radition endures in the life of the town, Falaise will
remember the _Neptune_ funeral procession. Not only was every navy in
the world represented, but also every strand of that loosely woven human
fabric we civilized peoples call a nation.

Through the long line of soldiers, each man with his arms reversed,
walked the official mourners, while from the fortifications there boomed
the minute gun.

First the President of the French Republic, with, to his right, the
Minister of Marine; and close behind them the stiff, still vigorous,
figure of old Admiral de Saint Vilquier. By his side walked the Mayor of
Falaise--so mortally pale, so what the French call undone, that the
Admiral felt fearful lest his neighbour should be compelled to fall out.

But Jacques de Wissant was not minded to fall out.

The crowd looking on, especially the wives of those substantial citizens
of the town who stood at their windows behind half-closed shutters and
drawn blinds, stared down at the mayor with pitying concern.

"He has a warm heart though a cold manner," murmured these ladies to one
another, "and just now, you know, he is in great anxiety, for his
wife--that beautiful Claire with whom he doesn't get on very well--is in
Italy, seriously ill of scarlet fever." "Yes, and as soon as this sad
ceremony is over, he will leave for the south--I hear that the President
has offered him a seat in his saloon as far as Paris."

As the head of the procession at last stopped on the great parade ground
where the last honours were to be rendered to the lowly yet illustrious
dead, Jacques de Wissant straightened himself with an instinctive
gesture, and his lips began to move. He was muttering to himself the
speech he would soon have to deliver, and which he had that morning,
making a great mental effort, committed to memory.

And after the President had had his long, emotional, and flowery say;
and when the oldest of French admirals had stepped forward and, in a
quavering voice, bidden the dead farewell on behalf of the Navy, it came
to the turn of the Mayor of Falaise.

He was there, he said, simply as the mouth-piece of his fellow-townsmen,
and they, bowed as they were by deep personal grief, could say but
little--they could indeed only murmur their eternal gratitude for the
sympathy they had received, and were now receiving, from their
countrymen and from the world.

Then Jacques de Wissant gave a brief personal account of each of the ten
sea