The stipulation was agreed to without a murmur, and they took their turns in the most orderly way.  A great many pints of beer go to a five-kroner note.  Martin and Tom Robson resolutely turned their backs on the temptation.  Woodlouse resisted it for a long time, but in the end he was obliged to give way.  Torpander was sitting on a stone at the corner of the cottage, gazing at the coffin.  His silk handkerchief had, in accordance with his earnest request, been allowed to follow Marianne to the grave; and on the lid of the coffin, over her heart, lay a garland which had cost him three kroner.  This was the only adornment the coffin possessed, for most of the flowers from the West End had been bought by the townspeople for the Consul’s funeral.  Marianne would otherwise have had plenty.

At length the people began to stream out of the church; those who were with Marianne had to wait till the main procession arrived at the cemetery.  The seamen then, after moistening their palms in the usual way, went on with their burden with renewed vigour.  There was no change from the five-kroner note.

No one could remember to have seen so long a funeral procession as that which followed the young Consul.  It reached almost from the church door, to the gate of the cemetery, which lay in a distant part of the town.  As they began to move slowly along the road, a whole crowd of hats came into view, hats of all kinds and shapes.  There was Morten’s new hat fresh from Paris, and the well-known broad brim of Dean Sparre.  There were hats of the old chimney-pot shape, with scarcely any brim at all, while others had brims which hung over almost like the roof of a Swiss cottage.  Some hats had a red tinge when they came into the glare of the sunshine, while others were brushed as smooth as velvet.  Twenty years’ changing fashions were blended together like a packet of “mixed drops.”  Only old Anders was still constant to his cap, which was covered with pitch as usual.  A crowd of boys and children followed on both sides of the road, and the cemetery, which lay on the slope of the hill, was already thronged at the part near the Garmans’ tomb.

At the entrance of the churchyard were planted two large flag-staves decorated with wreaths; the flags, which were at half-mast, hung down to the ground, waving gently in the light breeze.  The town band was now allowed a moment’s rest.  The whole way from the church it had played incessantly an indescribable air; and it was only in the evening, when an account appeared in the papers, that the air was recognized as Chopin’s Funeral March.

The precentor, with his choristers, “Satan’s clerks,” as he used to call them when he was annoyed, begun to intone a psalm.  The coffin was lifted from the hearse, and carried through the cemetery, by the principal merchants of the town.

It was a magnificent spectacle, as the long funeral procession, with here and there a uniform, and its many flower-decorated banners, moved majestically along through the seething crowd of women and children, which stood closely packed on and among the graves on both sides of the path.