Do not interrupt me, sweet Miss Smith.  I feel that you are angry.  I can see from here the pouting of your lips, and know what you are going to say.  You are going to say, “I will read no more of this Mr. Titmarsh; there is no subject, however solemn, but he treats it with flippant irreverence, and no character, however great, at whom he does not sneer.”

Ah, my dear! you are young now and enthusiastic; and your Titmarsh is old, very old, sad, and gray-headed.  I have seen a poor mother buy a halfpenny wreath at the gate of Montmartre burying-ground, and go with it to her little child’s grave, and hang it there over the little humble stone; and if ever you saw me scorn the mean offering of the poor shabby creature, I will give you leave to be as angry as you will.  They say that on the passage of Napoleon’s coffin down the Seine, old soldiers and country people walked miles from their villages just to catch a sight of the boat which carried his body and to kneel down on the shore and pray for him.  God forbid that we should quarrel with such prayers and sorrow, or question their sincerity.  Something great and good must have been in this man, something loving and kindly, that has kept his name so cherished in the popular memory, and gained him such lasting reverence and affection.

But, Madam, one may respect the dead without feeling awe-stricken at the plumes of the hearse; and I see no reason why one should sympathize with the train of mutes and undertakers, however deep may be their mourning.  Look, I pray you, at the manner in which the French nation has performed Napoleon’s funeral.  Time out of mind, nations have raised, in memory of their heroes, august mausoleums, grand pyramids, splendid statues of gold or marble, sacrificing whatever they had that was most costly and rare, or that was most beautiful in art, as tokens of their respect and love for the dead person.  What a fine example of this sort of sacrifice is that (recorded in a book of which Simplicity is the great characteristic) of the poor woman who brought her pot of precious ointment—­her all, and laid it at the feet of the Object which, upon earth, she most loved and respected.  “Economists and calculators” there were even in those days who quarrelled with the manner in which the poor woman lavished so much “capital;” but you will remember how nobly and generously the sacrifice was appreciated, and how the economists were put to shame.

With regard to the funeral ceremony that has just been performed here, it is said that a famous public personage and statesman, Monsieur Thiers indeed, spoke with the bitterest indignation of the general style of the preparations, and of their mean and tawdry character.  He would have had a pomp as magnificent, he said, as that of Rome at the triumph of Aurelian:  he would have decorated the bridges and avenues through which the procession was to pass, with the costliest marbles and the finest works of art, and have had them to remain there for ever as monuments of the great funeral.