At the obsequies of a great warrior, it is customary to include in the funeral procession the hero's favorite horse, his battle-horse, compelled to adapt to the snail-like pace of the cortège the prancing gait which survives the smell of gunpowder and the waving of standards. On this occasion Mora's great coupé, the "eight-spring" affair which carried him to social or political gatherings, occupied the place of that companion in victory, its panels draped in black, its lanterns enveloped in long, light streamers of crêpe, which floated to the ground with an indescribable undulatory feminine grace. That was a new idea for funerals, those veiled lanterns, the supreme manifestation of _chic_ in mourning; and it was most fitting for that dandy to give one last lesson in style to the Parisians who flocked to his funeral as to a Longchamps of death.
Three more masters of ceremonies, then came the impassive official display, always the same for marriages, deaths, baptisms, openings of Parliament, receptions by the sovereign,--the interminable procession of state carriages, with gleaming panels, great mirrors, gaudy, gold-bespangled liveries, which passed amid the dazzled throngs, reminding them of fairy tales, the equipages of Cinderella, and arousing the same _Ohs_! of admiration that ascend and burst with the bombs at displays of fireworks. And in the crowd there was always an obliging police officer, of an erudite petty bourgeois with nothing to do, on the watch for public ceremonials, to name aloud all the people in the carriages as they passed with their proper escorts of dragoons, cuirassiers or _gardes de Paris_.
First the representatives of the Emperor, the Empress, all the imperial family; then, in hierarchical order, scientifically worked out, the slightest departure from which might have caused a serious conflict between the various bodies of the government, the members of the Privy Council, the marshals, the admirals, the grand chancellor of the Legion of Honor, the Senate, the Corps Législatif, the Council of State, the whole of the judicial and educational departments, whose costumes, furred robes and wigs carried you back to the days of old Paris; they seemed pompous, superannuated, out of place in the sceptical era of the blouse and the black coat.