The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X by baron Arthur Léon Imbert de Saint-Amand
page 26 of 255 (10%)
page 26 of 255 (10%)
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the Tuileries. His body remained there until the 23d of September,
when, to the sound of a salvo of one hundred and one guns, it was borne to the Church of Saint-Denis. The coffin remained exposed in this basilica within a chapelle ardente, to the 24th of October, the eve of the day fixed for the obsequies, and during all this time the church was filled with a crowd of the faithful, belonging to all classes of society, who gathered from Paris and all the surrounding communes, to render a last homage to the old King. Sunday, 24th of October, at two o'clock in the afternoon, the body was transferred from the chapelle ardente to the catafalque prepared to receive it. Then the vespers and the vigils of the dead were sung, and the Grand Almoner, clad in his pontifical robes, officiated. The next day, Monday, the 25th of October, the services of burial took place. The Dauphin and Dauphiness left the Tuileries at 10:30 A.M., to be present at the funeral ceremony. In conformity with etiquette, Charles X. was not present. He remained at the Tuileries with the Duchess of Berry, with whom he heard a requiem Mass in the chapel of the Chateau at eleven o'clock. The Duchess was thus spared a painful spectacle. With what emotion would she not have seen opened the crypt in which she believed she would herself be laid, and which was the burial place of her assassinated husband and of her two children, dead so soon after their birth. The ceremony commences in the antique necropolis. The interior of the church is hung all with black to the spring of the arches, where fleurs-de-lis in gold are relieved against the funeral hangings. The light of day, wholly shut out, is replaced by an immense quantity of lamps, tapers, and candles, suspended from a |
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