Perhaps he cared, as
servants will, when no one else cares. The door opened almost directly
upon a staircase and the noise of the feet of those passing up and down
upon the stone steps disturbed the silence in the death chamber. At
night the poor body was thrust unhonoured into a common coach and driven
out to its resting-place.
In a vast hall, upon an enormous catafalque, full thirty feet above the
floor, lay all that was left of the honest king. Thousands of wax
candles cast their light up to the dark, shapeless face, and upon the
military accoutrements of the uniform in which the huge body was
clothed. A great crowd pressed to the railing to gaze their fill and go
away. Behind the division tall troopers in cuirasses mounted guard and
moved carelessly about. It was all tawdry, but tawdry on a magnificent
scale--all unlike the man in whose honour it was done. For he had been
simple and brave.
When he was at last borne to his tomb in the Pantheon, a file of
imperial and royal princes marched shoulder to shoulder down the street
before him, and the black charger he had loved was led after him.
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