To attempt to analyze her grief would be both out of place and impossible. In the drama of life, as well as on its theatrical stage, at the supreme moment of some tragic scene the curtain falls, and the company can only through imagination picture what takes place behind its heavy folds. the bereavement of the Empress, and over her hours of agony which followed, we likewise drop the curtain.

"She sat alone, and heard the nations cry,

'Lo now the child is dead!'

But his memory shall not fade,

Nor the halo die

That shineth around his head;

For his shall be the glory, and his the power,

And his the kingdom be;

And he shall reign-not for a little hour,

But-everlastingly."

In

H. CHARLES.

361

CHAPTER XX.

FUNERAL.

"His great ambition was to raise his father's fallen name,
To give back to his native land its ancient warlike fame:
Now all ambitious dreams are past, all earthly glory o'er;
His Throne is with his Father, on an ever-peaceful shore."

NEVER, within the annals of modern history, has

more imposing scene been witnessed than that which attended the funeral obsequies of the Prince Imperial at Chislehurst on July 12, 1879. Without being precisely a state funeral, there was yet nothing wanting in exterior pomp which could do honour to his name and race. On the other hand, there were many unofficial marks of respect, which set their seal to the universal affection and goodwill which the Prince had won for himself in the land of his adoption. No higher testimony, for instance, could possibly have been accorded to his memory than the fact of the unprecedented attendance of Royalty as his pall-bearers.

As a deeply-sorrowing mourner also, the Queen of England was the first to bend her knee in

prayer at his shrine, and with her own hand to place a wreath of laurels on his coffin.

The sad circumstances of the Prince's early death had crowned the interest with which England had watched his growth into manhood, and a general pathos marked the ceremony, which touched the hearts of all who witnessed it, and brought crowds to Chislehurst on the day of his interment.

Those who knew that quiet little village in the days of its obscurity, before it became the residence of the exiled family of France, must have been struck with the strange contrast it presented on the 12th of July, 1879. On that day a mighty stream of people threaded their way sorrowingly towards the small Roman Catholic Church of St. Mary's; all with the one object, viz., to see pass by the funeral train which contained what remained of the Hope of a great nation.

One of the distinctive English features of Chislehurst is its broad common-general propertywhose open space and free air re-echoes the joyful sound of children at play, the louder shouts of schoolboy cricketers, or the sharp, quick sound of horses' feet, as equestrians of either sex canter over its turf. In spring the verdure of its sward, in summer its glory of golden gorse, where larks lowly build, and then rise heavenwards in sweet song; its autumn tangle of bracken and bramble, amid which children hunt for blackberries and

cattle feed at leisure-these alternately have always given beauty and life to its broad expanse. Henceforth it will have an additional interest; and the stone cross erected in its centre to the memory of the Prince Imperial, will remind succeeding generations that a family of world-famed note made Chislehurst their home, and that, within the little churchyard near, Napoleon III. and his only son, the latter cut off in early manhood, both lie interred.

On the evening of the 11th of July the scene on the common almost equalled in pathos that of the following day's spectacle. A very large concourse of people had assembled to await the passage of the gun-carriage which conveyed the remains of the Prince from Woolwich to Camden House.

Some there were among that number, who had gone to the little railway station only a few months before to bid him good-bye, when he had left for Africa, full of youthful hope and spirit.

At nine p.m., when the grey shades of the summer night were gathering closely over sky and earth, the expectant crowd heard the tread of horses' feet, and saw at the turn of the cross roads, a troop of English soldiers, riding four abreast, and with their sabres drawn. These preceded the cortige. Behind, on a gun-carriage, lay the Prince's coffin, covered with the united colours of France and England, which served it

as a pall. Then came a company of ecclesiastics, and behind them an escort of troops, formed from the Royal Artillery and the Horse Artillery. Slowly and reverently the cortége passed through the crowd, and the coffin was carried back, to rest one night in the home of the Prince's exile.

The Empress had been watching, it is said, for weary hours, in nervous expectation of the arrival of her son's remains. She passed all that night by the side of the coffin, and at four a.m., when dawn broke over her agony, a religious service was held in the mortuary chapel at Camden House, in which she assisted, after which she took a last farewell of the shell that contained her child's body, and then, worn out with grief, was carried, fainting, to her room. ·

By nine a.m. on the morning of the 12th, Camden House was already filled with the relatives and friends of the Imperial family, who were admitted to the Chapelle Ardente, arranged in the picture-gallery, where the Prince's coffin was placed. Among these were veterans of Magenta and Solferino, with many other French adherents of the Emperor's, who came to pay a last tribute of respect to his son's memory.

The scene in this room was touching in the extreme, and yet withal a curious mixture of gloom and floral beauty. The walls were draped in black; but on them, as on the coffin, and piled