The Second Funeral of Napoleon
Page: 42

unnatural. The very fact of a squeeze dissipates all solemnity.
One great crowd is always, as I imagine, pretty much like another.
In the course of the last few years I have seen three: that
attending the coronation of our present sovereign, that which went
to see Courvoisier hanged, and this which witnessed the Napoleon
ceremony. The people so assembled for hours together are jocular
rather than solemn, seeking to pass away the weary time with the
best amusements that will offer. There was, to be sure, in all the
scenes above alluded to, just one moment--one particular moment--
when the universal people feels a shock and is for that second
serious.

But except for that second of time, I declare I saw no seriousness
here beyond that of ennui. The church began to fill with personages
of all ranks and conditions. First, opposite our seats came a
company of fat grenadiers of the National Guard, who presently, at
the word of command, put their muskets down against benches and
wainscots, until the arrival of the procession. For seven hours
these men formed the object of the most anxious solicitude of all
the ladies and gentlemen seated on our benches: they began to stamp
their feet, for the cold was atrocious, and we were frozen where we
sat. Some of them fell to blowing their fingers; one executed a
kind of dance, such as one sees often here in cold weather--the
individual jumps repeatedly upon one leg, and kicks out the other
violently, meanwhile his hands are flapping across his chest. Some
fellows opened their cartouche-boxes, and from them drew eatables of
various kinds. You can't think how anxious we were to know the
qualities of the same. "Tiens, ce gros qui mange une cuisse de
volaille!"--"Il a du jambon, celui-la." "I should like some, too,"
growls an Englishman, "for I hadn't a morsel of breakfast," and so
on. This is the way, my dear, that we see Napoleon buried.

Did you ever see a chicken escape from clown in a pantomime, and hop
over into the pit, or amongst the fiddlers? and have you not seen
the shrieks of enthusiastic laughter that the wondrous incident
occasions? We had our chicken, of course: there never was a public