GREAT funerals and the speeches which they provoke sometimes fail to fix a serious moral, or to temper the minds of these who are present to see and hear. The funeral of Victor Hugo was no exception to this remark. As a tribute of the affection in which he was held by his fellow-countrymen, it was a signal success. All Paris left its occupations and amusements to accompany his body to the grave, while vast numbers of people flocked in from the provinces for the same purpose. Deputations from municipalities, from Algerian and Colonial societies, from home and foreign societies of every sort and description joined in the procession. The great man's photograph was hawked about the streets, and the crowd brought together was almost greater then any ever seen before in Paris.
No less then forty thousand persons are believed to have spent the night preceding the funeral in the open air, with a view to securing a vantage-point for seeing the procession. As much as sixty or seventy pounds was paid for windows on the route. But there is no disguising the fact that the great proportion of these who were present availed themselves of the occasion to celebrate a general holiday. Victor Hugo, with all his popularity among the middle and lower classes of Frenchmen, was after all used, in his funeral obsequies, as an excuse for a public fete. Here and there the tricolour fringed with crape was displayed, and the lamp-posts were similarly adorned, but among the masses of the people there was just such a vein of hilarity as may be seen in the crowd which goes to see an English Derby. We are far from saying that a funeral ought always to be an occasion of the deepest gloom. It is the custom even is this country for the band which has played a soldier to his last resting-place to the strain of the Dead March in "Saul," to play a quick and lively measure on leaving the burial-place. Nor do we think that tears alone should be shed over the tomb of Victor Hugo. The great man might have said, with as much truth as Horace, that he would not altogether die. The greater part of him will live long is the hearts of such of his countrymen and men of other nations who are worthy to appreciate him. To such his memory will always be a bright pleasure, and his earthly dissolution only a debt to nature owed by his old age. To men such as Victor Hugo death has no terrors; it is an actual gain. At the same time, we fear, there is no doubt that the Parisian crowd was rather bent yesterday of its own pleasure then on doing honour to Victor Hugo. Six orations were delivered before the catafalque, under the Arc de Triomphe, which appear to have been good in point of quality, and were certainly not deficient in point of quantity. In one respect the French Government is to be congratulated. To the surprise of everybody the ceremony passed off without any disturbance. A few Anarchists who endeavoured to wave some red flags were speedily extinguished by the police, and perfect tranquillity was maintained. Thus unanimity prevailed; and if the crowd was gay rather then sympathetic, it avoided the disgrace of fighting over the grave of him who in the highest sense strove for the realisation of Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality.
Daily Chronicle, June 2.
Victor Hugo's Funeral
Victor Hugo's Funeral
Table of Contents
Miracles of healing - Christian Miracles or Healing
History of Russia: Christian Versus Barbarian
History of Japan: Early Christian Martyrs
The Jesus of History
The Assyrian Origin of Devil Worshippers
The Christ Of Dogma
The early history of Constantinople
