e rain was descending in torrents, but
the procession, followed by a large crowd, walked the whole way across
Paris to the Cemetery of Pere-la-Chaise, where the interment took
place. The pall-bearers were Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Monsieur
Baroche, and Sainte-Beuve. At the grave Victor Hugo spoke, finishing
with the words: "No, it is not the Unknown to him. I have said this
before, and I shall never tire of repeating it: it is not darkness to
him, it is Light! It is not the end, but the beginning; not
nothingness, but eternity! Is not this the truth, I ask you who listen
to me? Such coffins proclaim immortality. In the presence of certain
illustrious dead, we understand the divine destiny of that intellect
which has traversed earth to suffer and to be purified. Do we not say
to ourselves here, to-day, that it is impossible for a great genius in
this life to be other than a great spirit after death?"[*]

[*] "Funerailles de Balzac," in "Actes et Paroles," by Victor Hugo.

The Cemetery of Pere-la-Chaise had been one of Balzac's favourite
haunts in the old half-starved days of the Rue Lesdiguieres. "Here I
am back from Pere-la-Chaise," he wrote to his sister in 1820,[*] "and
I have brought with me some good big inspiring reflections. Decidedly,
the only fine epitaphs are these: La Fontaine, Messena, Moliere, a
single name, which tells all and makes one dream." Probably Madame
Surville remembered these words and repeated them to Madame Honore de
Balzac, for the monument erected to Balzac is a broken column with his
name inscribed on it.

[*] "Correspondance," vol. i. p. 24.

The fortunes of the inhabitants of the Rue Fortunee were not happy
after Balzac's death. Madame Honore de Balzac's contemporaries
considered that she as not really as overwhelmed with sorrow at her
husband's death as she appeared to be, and that when she wrote
heartbroken letters, she slightly exaggerated the real state of her
feelings; but she assumed gallantly the burdens laid upon her by the
state of pecuniary embarrassment in which her husband died. If Balzac
had lived longer and had been able to work steadily, there is little
doubt that he would in a few years have become a free man, as the
Vicomte de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul tells us[*] that in the years
between 1841 and 1847, after which date his productions became very
rare, he had enormously diminished the sum he owed.

[*] "La Genese d'un Roman de Balzac," by the Vicomte de Spoelberch