had possession of its heart, and which it loved. The crowd went silently
and thoughtfully down the avenue of the _Champs Elysées_, and they
almost fought for the commemorative medals and the common portraits
which hawkers were selling, or climbed upon the stands which street boys
had erected here and there, and whence they could see over the heads of
the crowd. The _Place de la Concorde_ had something solemn about it,
with its circle of statues hung from head to foot with long crape
coverings, which looked in the distance like widows, weeping and
praying.

According to his last wish, Jean Ramel had been conveyed to the Pantheon
in the wretched paupers' hearse, which conveys them to the common grave
at the shambling trot of some thin and broken-winded horse.

That dreadful, black conveyance without any drapery, without plumes and
without flowers, which was followed by Ministers and deputies, by
several regiments with their bands, and their flags flying above the
helmets and the sabers, by children from the national schools, by
delegates from the provinces, and an innumerable crowd of men in
blouses, of women, of shop-keepers from every quarter, had a most
theatrical effect, and while standing on the steps of the Pantheon, at
the foot of the massive columns of the portico, the orators successively
discanted on his apotheosis, tried to make their voices predominate over
the noise, emphasized their pompous periods, and finished the
performance by a poor third act, which makes people yawn and gradually
empties the theater, people remembered who that man had been, on whom
such posthumous honors were being bestowed, and who was having such a
funeral: it was Jean Ramel.

Those three sonorous syllables called up a lionine head, with white hair