There were already two rows of emblazoned carriages on either side the church; a few curious sightseers, the usual beggars. The portals were hung with black. The Duchesse, on Emmanuel's arm, hobbled towards them; the leather door squeaked, Armand caught it from his brother, and they were inside. The Comte dipped his finger in the holy-water stoup and held it out half-smiling to his wife; finding, however, that she had no idea what he intended her to do, he crossed himself carelessly and preceded her up the aisle. The Swiss (whose semi-martial appearance Horatia supposed to be peculiar to this particular ceremony) having found seats for the Dowager and the Marquis, waved them into two chairs just behind.
The church too was hung with black--Horatia had never imagined an effect so gloomy. It was already nearly full of bowed, sable figures. In the middle of the nave was a great black-draped catafalque surrounded by enormous candles; the Bourbon arms glinted on the top, and at the end hung a large wreath of immortelles.
And the Mass began--but Horatia paid small attention to what, after all, she could not follow. Rather she came increasingly to realise that this was history. The old white-haired priest of whom she could catch glimpses at the altar, had, so they said, taken the last consolations of religion forty years ago to the murdered Queen; now he was praying (so she supposed) for the soul of the murdered Prince, her nephew. "Dona ei requiem," sang the choir, and it became impossible for her not to fancy that the Duc de Berry's actual body lay under the pall.
The Mass was finished, or nearly finished, Horatia conjectured, for people were moving their chairs about, when something was passed from hand to hand along the row in front of her--a paper of some kind. The Duchesse, when it came to her, kissed it; the Marquis Emmanuel glanced at it a moment and then, slightly turning, passed it to his brother behind him. And Horatia, looking at it with her husband (and having imagined it to be some holy relic) saw only a coloured lithograph of a boy about ten years of age, wearing a crown and a royal mantle.
"The Duc de Bordeaux--Henri V," whispered Armand, and he passed it on. Evidently there were other copies going round the congregation, for a moment or two later Horatia saw a young man in the uniform of the National Guard walk up to the catafalque and affix one to the end, just above the wreath of immortelles. A murmur rippled through the congregation then chairs scraped in all directions, and half a dozen ladies heavily veiled, and one or two men, were out of their places detaching the flowers, which, after kissing, they placed in their bosoms or their paroissiens. More came, till the catafalque was the centre of a crowd, and it took Emmanuel a long time to get the flower for which his grandmother asked him. Progress down the church was equally difficult, and Armand and Horatia became separated from their elders, who were in front. At the door there was difficulty in getting out and a sound of loud voices, and when they did at length emerge it was into the midst of a vociferating and hostile crowd.