I am going to _her_ chamber, where I shall
stay until the time has come to go. You alone may come in there to
tell me what you have done. Go, and spare nothing."
During the morning, Madame Jules, after lying in a mortuary chapel at
the door of her house, was taken to Saint-Roch. The church was hung
with black throughout. The sort of luxury thus displayed had drawn a
crowd; for in Paris all things are sights, even true grief. There are
people who stand at their windows to see how a son deplores a mother
as he follows her body; there are others who hire commodious seats to
see how a head is made to fall. No people in the world have such
insatiate eyes as the Parisians. On this occasion, inquisitive minds
were particularly surprised to see the six lateral chapels at
Saint-Roch also hung in black. Two men in mourning were listening to a
mortuary mass said in each chapel. In the chancel no other persons but
Monsieur Desmarets, the notary, and Jacquet were present; the servants
of the household were outside the screen. To church loungers there was
something inexplicable in so much pomp and so few mourners. But Jules
had been determined that no indifferent persons should be present at
the ceremony.
High mass was celebrated with the sombre magnificence of funeral
services. Beside the ministers in ordinary of Saint-Roch, thirteen
priests from other parishes were present. Perhaps never did the _Dies
irae_ produce upon Christians, assembled by chance, by curiosity, and
thirsting for emotions, an effect so profound, so nervously glacial as
that now caused by this hymn when the eight voices of the precentors,
accompanied by the voices of the priests and the choir-boys, intoned
it alternately.
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