Her son was at Paris, and did not arrive till after the funeral. Remembering her wish to be buried at St. Point, he had her removed. The grave was opened at midnight, one cold night in December, when the ground was covered with snow.
The peasants, whom she loved and who loved her, took turns in carrying the bier eight leagues, her son on foot behind. Not a word, not a whisper, was to be heard on the way. When they approached Milly, between two and three o’clock in the morning, all the peasants stood in their door-ways, with pale faces and tearful eyes, holding lamps in their trembling hands. They all came out to follow the procession to Milly, where her coffin was placed for a while at the entrance, on the very benches where every morning sat the needy to whom she used to distribute food or medicine.
All the sobbing crowd came up to sprinkle her body with holy water and utter a prayer.
M. de Lamartine afterward built a chapel over the grave of his mother at St. Point, which bears on its cornice the inscription:
[54] _Le Manuscrit de Ma Mère; or, Extracts from the Journal of Madame de Lamartine._ Edited by her Son. Hachette & Co., Paris. 1871.
A QUARTER OF AN HOUR IN THE OLD ROMAN FORUM DURING A SPEECH OF CICERO’S.
A PASSAGE FROM CICERO’S SPEECH IN SUPPORT OF L. LICINIUS MURENA’S CANDIDACY FOR THE CONSULATE, AGAINST THAT OF SERVIUS SULPICIUS--TWENTY YEARS BEFORE CICERO’S ASSASSINATION--CICERO AND C. ANTONY BEING CONSULS--SIXTY-TWO YEARS BEFORE CHRIST.
Introductory Note: Servius Sulpicius was perhaps the most eminent practitioner of his day in that branch of the law which belongs to the “special pleader” and the “conveyancer”; but so little of a speaker that he would not venture alone to recommend his own cause or to urge his claims before the Roman people. He employed Cneius Postumius, then very young, and Marcus Cato, a most weighty orator, whose character, however (and a reputation for unswerving principle and the austerest virtues), had a larger share than the mental power of his words in securing to them influence and authority. It was less important what Cato said than that it had been said by Cato. How very different was the case with Hortensius! A stranger, whose face, whose name, not one of the audience knew, fitly delivering any of Hortensius’ harangues, would have commanded attention from the first, retained it to the last, raised many an interrupting tempest of applause during its progress, and left, when he had finished, a powerful, a formidable impression.