First, there was a tall handsome cross-bearer, bearing a long gold cross, of which the front was turned towards his grace the Archbishop.  Then came a double row of about sixteen incense-boys, dressed in white surplices:  the first boy, about six years old, the last with whiskers and of the height of a man.  Then followed a regiment of priests in black tippets and white gowns:  they had black hoods, like the moon when she is at her third quarter, wherewith those who were bald (many were, and fat too) covered themselves.  All the reverend men held their heads meekly down, and affected to be reading in their breviaries.

After the Priests came some Bishops of the neighboring districts, in purple, with crosses sparkling on their episcopal bosoms.

Then came, after more priests, a set of men whom I have never seen before—­a kind of ghostly heralds, young and handsome men, some of them in stiff tabards of black and silver, their eyes to the ground, their hands placed at right angles with their chests.

Then came two gentlemen bearing remarkable tall candlesticks, with candles of corresponding size.  One was burning brightly, but the wind (that chartered libertine) had blown out the other, which nevertheless kept its place in the procession—­I wondered to myself whether the reverend gentleman who carried the extinguished candle, felt disgusted, humiliated, mortified—­perfectly conscious that the eyes of many thousands of people were bent upon that bit of refractory wax.  We all of us looked at it with intense interest.

Another cross-bearer, behind whom came a gentleman carrying an instrument like a bedroom candlestick.

His Grandeur Monseigneur Affre, Archbishop of Paris:  he was in black and white, his eyes were cast to the earth, his hands were together at right angles from his chest:  on his hands were black gloves, and on the black gloves sparkled the sacred episcopal—­what do I say?—­archiepiscopal ring.  On his head was the mitre.  It is unlike the godly coronet that figures upon the coach-panels of our own Right Reverend Bench.  The Archbishop’s mitre may be about a yard high:  formed within probably of consecrated pasteboard, it is without covered by a sort of watered silk of white and silver.  On the two peaks at the top of the mitre are two very little spangled tassels, that frisk and twinkle about in a very agreeable manner.

Monseigneur stood opposite to us for some time, when I had the opportunity to note the above remarkable phenomena.  He stood opposite me for some time, keeping his eyes steadily on the ground, his hands before him, a small clerical train following after.  Why didn’t they move?  There was the National Guard keeping on presenting arms, the little drummers going on rub-dub-dub—­rub-dub-dub—­in the same steady, slow way, and the Procession never moved an inch.  There was evidently, to use an elegant phrase, a hitch somewhere.

[Enter a fat priest who bustles up to the drum-major.]