with which his predecessor Henri III had been conveyed to St. Denis only
a week previously, the remains of the latter sovereign having hitherto
been suffered to remain in the church of St. Camille at Compiègne,
whence they were removed under the guard of the Ducs d'Epernon and de
Bellegarde, his former favourites; the etiquette in such an emergency
not permitting the inhumation of the recently deceased King in the
vaults of the royal abbey until his predecessor should have occupied his
appointed place.

The first stage of the funeral procession was Notre-Dame; and as the
gorgeous _cortège_ approached the church, all its avenues, save that
which was kept clear by the Swiss Guards, were thronged by the citizens
and artizans of the capital; sounds of weeping and lamentation were to
be heard on every side; yet still, divided between grief and curiosity,
the crowd swept on; and as the last section of the melancholy procession
disappeared beneath the venerable portals of the cathedral, its vast
esplanade was alive with earnest and eager human beings, who, fearful of
exclusion from the interior of the building, pressed rudely against each
other, overthrowing the weak and battling with the strong in their
anxiety to assist at the awful and solemn ceremony which was about to
be enacted.

Only a few moments had consequently elapsed ere a dense mass of the
people choked almost to suffocation the gothic arches and the nave of
the sacred edifice, while the aisles were peopled by the more exalted
individuals who had composed the funeral procession. Upwards of three
thousand nobles, and a great number of ladies, all clad in mourning
dresses, and attended by their pages and equerries, blended their
melancholy voices with the responses of the canons of the cathedral; the
bishops of the adjacent sees, and the archbishops in their rich raiment