In the midst of so many horrible events, which interest the whole mass
of the people, ought I to mention an incident which broke but one
heart? Yes, I think the sad episode is not without importance, even in
so vast a picture. It was a child’s funeral. The little wooden coffin,
scantily covered with a black pall, was not larger, as Théophile
Gautier says, “than a violin case.” There were few mourners. A woman,
the mother doubtless, in a black stuff dress and white crimped cap,
holding by the hand a boy, who had not yet reached the age of sorrowing
tears, and behind them a little knot of neighbours and friends. The
small procession crept along the wide street in the bright sunlight.
When it reached the church they found the door closed, and yet the
money for the mass had been paid the night before, and the hour for the
ceremony fixed. One of the women went forward towards the door of the
vestry, where she was met by a National Guard, who told her with a
superfluity of oaths that she must not go in, that the —— curé, the
sacristan, and all the d—— fellows of the church were locked up, and
that they would no longer have anything to do with patriots. Then the
mother approached and said, “But who will bury my poor child if the
curé is in prison?” and then she began to weep bitterly at the thought
that there would be no prayers put up for the good of the little
spirit, and that no holy water would be sprinkled on its coffin. Yes,
members of the Commune, she wept, and she wept longer and more bitterly
later at the cemetery, when she saw them lower the body of her child
into the grave, without a prayer or a recommendation to God’s mercy.
You must not scoff at her, you see she was a poor weak woman, with
ideas of the narrowest sort; but there are other mothers like her,
quite unworthy of course to bear the children of patriots, who do not
want their dear ones to be buried like dogs; who cannot understand that
to pray is a crime, and to kneel down before God an offence to
humanity, and who still are weak enough to wish to see a cross planted
on the tombs of those they have loved and lost! Not the cross of the
nineteenth century—a red flag! such as now graces the dome of the
church of the Pantheon.[41]