ise men, filled the air between two drum-beats. With feet in
the water, dressed in blouses and cotton caps, the head uncovered from
habit, poverty, forced labor, idleness and strikes watched with a sneer
the passing of that dweller in another sphere, that brilliant duke now
shorn of all his honors, who never in his life perhaps had visited that
extremity of the city. But here he is! To reach the spot to which
everybody goes, one must follow the road that everybody follows:
Faubourg Saint-Antoine, Rue de la Roquette, to that mammoth toll-gate
open so wide into the infinite. And _dame_! it is pleasant to see that
noblemen like Mora, dukes and ministers, all take the same road to the
same destination. That equality in death consoles one for many unjust
things in life. To-morrow the bread will seem not so dear, the wine
better, the tools less heavy, when one can say to oneself on rising:
"Well, that old Mora had to come to it like everybody else."

The procession dragged along, even more tiresome than lugubrious. Now it
was the choral societies, deputations from the Army and Navy, officers
of all arms of the service, herded together in front of a long line of
empty carriages, mourning carriages, gentlemen's carriages, parading in
compliance with etiquette; then came the troops in their turn, and Rue
de la Roquette, that long street running through the filthy faubourg,
already swarming with people as far as the eye could see, swallowed up a
whole army, infantry, dragoons, lancers, carabineers, heavy guns with
muzzles in the air, all ready to bark, shaking pavements and
window-panes, but unable to drown the rolling of the drums, a sinister,
barbarous sound, which transported Felicia's imagination to the
obsequies of African monarchs, where thousands of immolated victims
attend the soul of a prince so that it may not enter the kingdom of
spirits alone, and made her think that perhaps that ostentatious,
interminable procession was about to descend and disappear in a
supernatural grave vast enough to hold it all.

"Now, and in the hour of our death. Amen!" murmured La Crenmitz, while
the cab rattled across the empty square, where Liberty, in solid gold,
seemed to be taking a magic flight in space; and the old dancer's prayer
was perhaps the only sincere note of true emotion uttered throughout the
vast space covered by the funeral.

* * * * *

All the discourses are at an end, three long discours