"Monsieur the Duke d'Uzes, charged with the functions of Grand Master
of France, come and perform your duty." Then the maitres de l'hotel,
the chambellans de l'hotel, and the first maitre de l'hotel approach
the vault, break their batons, cast them in, and return to their places.
The King-at-Arms summons the persons bearing the insignia of royalty.
"Monsieur the Duke of Bressac, bring la main de justice.
"Monsieur the Duke of Chevreuse, bring the sceptre.
"Monsieur the Duke of la Tremoille, bring the crown."
These three insignia are taken down into the vault, as were the flag
and the four standards.
Then the Duke d'Uzes, putting the end of the baton of Grand Master of
France within the vault, cries out: "The King is dead!"
The King-at-Arms withdraws three paces, and repeats in a low voice:
"The King is dead! the King is dead! the King is dead!" Then turning to
the assembly he says: "Pray for the repose of his soul!"
At this moment the clergy and all the assistants throw themselves upon
their knees, pray, and rise again. The Duke d'Uzes withdraws his baton
from the vault, and brandishing it, calls out: "Long live the King!"
The King-at-Arms repeats: "Long live the King! long live the King! long
live the King! Charles, tenth of the name, by the grace of God, King of
France and Navarre, very Christian, very august, very puissant, our
very honored lord and good master, to whom God grant long and happy
life! Cry ye all: Long live the King!" Then the trumpets, drums, fifes,
and instruments of the military bands break into a loud fanfare, and
their sound is mingled with the prolonged acclamations of the assembly,
whose cries "Long live the King! long live Charles X.!" contrast with
the silence of the tombs.
"To this outburst of the public hopes," says the Moniteur, "succeeded
the return of pious and mournful duties; the tomb is closed over the
mortal remains of the monarch whose subjects, restored to happiness,
greeted him on his return from the land of exile with the name of Louis
le Desire, and who twice reconciled his people with Europe. This
imposing ceremony being ended, the princes were again escorted into the
Abbey to their apartments, by the Grand Master, the Master of
Ceremonies and his aides, preceded by the Master-at-Arms, and the
Heralds-at-Arms, who had resumed their caps, coats-of-arms, and rods.
Then the crowd slowly dispersed. We shall not try to express the
sentiments to which this imposing and mournful ceremony must give rise.
With the regrets and sorrow caused by the death of a prince so justly
wept, mingle the hopes inspired by a King already the master of all
hearts. This funeral ceremony when, immediately after the burial of a
monarch whom God had called to Himself, were heard cries of 'Long live
Charles X.,'--the new King greeted at the tomb of his august
predecessor,--this inauguration, amid the pomps of death, must have
left impressions not to be rendered, and beyond the power of
imagination to represent."
Reader, if this recital has interested you, go visit the Church of
Saint-Denis. There is not, perhaps, in all the world, a spectacle more
impressive than the sight of the ancient necropolis of kings. Enter the
basilica, admirably restored under the Second Empire. By the mystic
light of the windows, faithful reproductions of those of former
centuries,--the funerals of so many kings, the profanations of 1793,
the restoration of the tombs,--all this invades your thought and
inspires you with a dim religious impression of devotion. These stones
have their language. Lapides clamabunt. They speak amid the sepulchral
silence. Listen to the echo of a far-away voice. There, under these
arches, centuries old, the 21st of August, 1670, Bossuet pronounced the
funeral oration of Madame Henriette of England. He said:--
"With whatever haughty distinction men may flatter themselves, they all
have the same origin, and this origin insignificant. Their years follow
each other like waves; they flow unceasingly, and though the sound of
some is slightly greater and their course a trifle longer than those of
others, they are together confounded in an abyss where are known
neither princes nor kings nor the proud distinctions of men, as the
most boasted rivers mingle in the ocean, nameless and inglorious with
the least known streams."
Is not the Church of Saint-Denis itself a funeral discourse in stone
more grandiose and eloquent than that of the reverend orator? Regard on
either side of the nave these superb mausoleums, these pompous tombs
that are but an empty show, and since their dead dwell not in them,
contemplate these columns that seem to wish to bear to heaven the
splendid testimony of our nothingness! There, at the right of the main
altar, descend the steps that lead to the crypt. There muse on all the
kings, the queens, the princes, and princesses, whose bones have been
replaced at hazard within these vaults, after their bodies had been, in
1793, cast into a common ditch in the cemetery of the Valois to be
consumed by quicklime. The great ones of the earth, dispossessed of
their sepulchres, could they not say, in the region of shades, in the
mournful words of the Sermonnaire:--
"Death does not leave us body enough to require room, and it is only
the tombs that claim the sight; our body takes another name; even that
of corpse, since it implies something of the human form, remains to it
but a little time; it becomes a something nameless in any tongue, so
truly does everything die in it, even the funeral terms by which its
unhappy remains are designated. Thus the Power divine, justly angered
by our pride, reduces it to nothingness, and, to level all conditions
forever, makes common ashes of us all."
The remains of so many sovereigns and princes are no longer even
corpses. The corpses have perished as ruins perish. You may no longer
see the coffins of the predecessors of Louis XVI. But those of the
Martyr-King, of the Queen Marie Antoinette, of the Duke of Berry, of
Louis XVIII., are there before you in the crypt. Pause. Here is the
royal vault of the Bourbons. Your glance can enter only a narrow grated
window, through which a little twilight filters. If a lamp were not
lighted at the back, the eye would distinguish nothing. By the doubtful
gleam of this sepulchral lamp, you succeed in making out in the gloom
the coffins placed on trestles of iron; to the left that of the Duke of
Berry, then the two little coffins of his children, dead at birth; then
in two rows those of Mesdames Adelaide and Victoire, daughters of Louis
XV., those of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, those of the two last
Princes of Conde, died in 1818 and in 1830, and on the right, at the
very extremity of the vault, that of the only sovereign who, for the
period of a century, died upon the throne, Louis XVIII.
The royal vault of the Bourbons was diminished more than half to make
room for the imperial vault constructed under Napoleon III. The former
entrance, on the steps of which stand the Heralds-at-Arms at the
obsequies of the kings, has been suppressed. The coffin of Louis XVIII.
was not placed on the iron trestles, where it rests to-day, at the time
of his funeral. It was put at the threshold of the vault, where it was
to have been replaced by that of Charles X.; for by the ancient
tradition, when a king of France dies, as his successor takes his place
on the throne, so he, in death, displaces his predecessor. But Louis
XVIII. waited in vain for Charles X. in the royal vault of the
Bourbons; the last brother of Louis XVI. reposes in the chapel of the
Franciscans at Goritz.
Charles X. is not alone in being deprived of his rights in his tomb;
the Duke and Duchess of Angouleme and the Count of Chambord were so,
and also Napoleon III. The second Emperor and Prince Imperial, his son,
sleep their sleep in England; for the Bonapartes, like the Bourbons,
have been exiled from Saint-Denis. By a decree of the 18th of November,
1858, the man who had re-established the Empire decided that the
imperial dynasty should have its sepulture in the ancient necropolis of
the kings. Napoleon III. no more, realized his dream than Napoleon I.
He had completed under his reign the magnificent vault destined for
himself and his race. But once more was accomplished the Sic vos non
vobis, and no imperial corpse has ever taken its place in the still
empty Napoleonic vault. The opening situated in the church, near the
centre of the nave, is at present closed by enormous flagstones framed
in copper bands; and as there is no inscription on these, many people
whose feet tread them in visiting the church do not suspect that they
have beneath them the stairway of six steps leading down to the vault
that was to be the burial place of emperors. "Oh, vanity! Oh,
nothingness! Oh, mortals ignorant of their destinies!" It is not enough
that contending dynasties dispute each other's crowns; their
covetousness and rivalry must extend to their tombs. Not enough that
sovereigns have been exiled from their country; they must be exiled
from their graves. Disappointments in life and in death. This is the
last word of divine anger, the last of the lessons of Providence.
V