The Second Funeral of Napoleon
Page: 45

before--a kind of ghostly heralds, young and handsome men, some of
them in stiff tabards of black and silver, their eyes to the ground,
their hands placed at right angles with their chests.

Then came two gentlemen bearing remarkable tall candlesticks, with
candles of corresponding size. One was burning brightly, but the
wind (that chartered libertine) had blown out the other, which
nevertheless kept its place in the procession--I wondered to myself
whether the reverend gentleman who carried the extinguished candle,
felt disgusted, humiliated, mortified--perfectly conscious that the
eyes of many thousands of people were bent upon that bit of
refractory wax. We all of us looked at it with intense interest.

Another cross-bearer, behind whom came a gentleman carrying an
instrument like a bedroom candlestick.

His Grandeur Monseigneur Affre, Archbishop of Paris: he was in black
and white, his eyes were cast to the earth, his hands were together
at right angles from his chest: on his hands were black gloves, and
on the black gloves sparkled the sacred episcopal--what do I say?--
archiepiscopal ring. On his head was the mitre. It is unlike the
godly coronet that figures upon the coach-panels of our own Right
Reverend Bench. The Archbishop's mitre may be about a yard high:
formed within probably of consecrated pasteboard, it is without
covered by a sort of watered silk of white and silver. On the two
peaks at the top of the mitre are two very little spangled tassels,
that frisk and twinkle about in a very agreeable manner.

Monseigneur stood opposite to us for some time, when I had the
opportunity to note the above remarkable phenomena. He stood
opposite me for some time, keeping his eyes steadily on the ground,
his hands before him, a small clerical train following after. Why
didn't they move? There was the National Guard keeping on
presenting arms, the little drummers going on rub-dub-dub--rub-dub-
dub--in the same steady, slow way, and the Procession never moved an
inch. There was evidently, to use an elegant phrase, a hitch
somewhere.

[Enter a fat priest who bustles up to the drum-major.]