Page:Garman and Worse.djvu/261

Rh an account appeared in the papers, that the air was recognized as Chopin's Funeral March.

The precentor, with his choristers, "Satan's clerks," as he used to call them when he was annoyed, begun to intone a psalm. The coffin was lifted from the hearse, and carried through the cemetery, by the principal merchants of the town.

It was a magnificent spectacle, as the long funeral procession, with here and there a uniform, and its many flower-decorated banners, moved majestically along through the seething crowd of women and children, which stood closely packed on and among the graves on both sides of the path.

The funeral party now assembled round the grave, into which the coffin was lowered. The merchants who had carried it looked relieved when he was laid to rest; he had been an equally heavy burden to them both in death and in life. The singing ceased, and a silence ensued, as the clergyman ascended the little heap of earth which had been thrown up at the side of the grave.

During the latter part of the preparation of his discourse, the chaplain had felt keenly in what a difficult position he was placed in regard to the deceased. Since his engagement with Madeleine, his first duty was to be strictly impartial, and not to allow himself to be led into any flattering expressions, which would be quite out of place from the lips of one who had, in point of fact, become one of the family.

The dean had, in his discourse in the church,