inexplicable multitude of carriages and omnibuses jammed together at
the approaches to Pont de la Concorde.

"Go on, driver, go on."

"I can't, Madame,--it's the funeral."

She put her head out of the window and instantly withdrew it, in dismay.
A double line of soldiers marching with guns reversed, a wilderness of
helmets, of heads uncovered while an interminable procession passed. It
was Mora's funeral procession.

"Don't stay here. Drive around some other way," she cried to the driver.

The vehicle turned painfully, tearing itself away with regret from that
superb spectacle for which Paris had been waiting four days, rolled back
up the avenue, into Rue Montaigne, and down Boulevard Malesherbes, at an
unwilling, crawling trot, to the Madeleine. There the crowd was greater,
more compact. In the heavy mist, the brightly lighted windows of the
church, the muffled strains of the funeral chants behind the black
hangings, which were in such profusion that they concealed even the
shape of the Greek temple, filled the whole square with reminders of the
service then in progress, while the greater part of the huge procession
still crowded Rue Royale as far as the bridges,--a long black line
connecting the defunct statesman with the iron fence of the Corps
Legislatif through which he had so often passed. Beyond the Madeleine
the roadway of the boulevard was entirely empty, kept clear by two lines
of soldiers, who forced the spectators back to the sidewalks, black with
people; all the stores closed, and the balconies, despite the rain,
overflowing with bodies leaning far forward in the direction of the
church, as if to watch the passage of a herd of fat cattle, or the
return of victorious troops. Paris, greedy of spectacles, makes a
spectacle of everything indifferently, of civil war or of the burial of
a statesman.

Once more the cab must retrace its steps, make another detour, and we
can fancy the ill-humor of the driver and his beasts, Parisians all
three at heart, and furious at being deprived of such a fine show.
Thereupon, through the silent deserted streets, all the life of Paris
having betaken itself to the great artery of the boulevard, began a
capricious, aimless journey, the senseless loitering of a cab hired by
the hour, reaching the extreme limits of Faubourg Saint-Martin, Faubourg
Saint-Denis, returning toward the centre, and always finding at the end
of every circuit, every stratagem, the same obstacle lying