THE funeral of Victor Hugo has passed off quietly. The greatest spectacle of the age -- for it is impossible to regard yesterday's ceremony in any other light then as a spectacle -- has not been marred, as too many feared that it would be marred, by violence and bloodshed. That serious riots should have been feared is a proof of the distance which still, unfortunately, separates the Parisian bourgeoisie from the democracy, and of the constant dread of riot and revolution which is present to the minds of the former. They are never quite free from the persuasion that they are living on a volcano, -which may break out at any moment; and experience has shown them that when the lava stream is once loosed it flows swiftly and far. The ease with which the dangerous emblems were suppressed seems to show that, as far as the demonstration of yesterday was concerned, these fears were greatly exaggerated. A little dexterity on the part of the authorities was quite enough to checkmate the Anarchists. By merely inviting the. bodies likely to show seditious flags to meet near the Arc de Triomphe the Government had them, so to speak, in a trap. The police were ready. Being in plain clothes, they were not recognised, and they were able to surround the bearers of red flags and to seize the obnoxious emblems, and if necessary their bearers, without the crowd knowing what was being done. It is a somewhat amusing instance of the irony of fortune that the two rival historians of the Commune, M. Maxime Du Camp and M. Lissagaray, should both have suffered temporary extinction on the same day. M. Du Camp happens to be the Director of the Academy -- an office filled by the members in some kind of rotation -- and as such it was his duty to speak for the Academy at Victor Hugo's funeral. But M. Du Camp, who began life as a very advanced politician, has lately gone over more or less to the reaction, and his history of the Commune, "Les Convulsions de Paris," is a book which is literally detested by every Radical. Consequently, and especially after the disturbances of last week at Pere Lachaise, there was imminent danger that the mob would not allow him to speak ; and the Academy, choosing between a disturbance very offensive to its dignity and a speech elsewhere then by the coffin, determined on the middle course of substituting a more neutrally minded orator in the person of M. Emile Augier, the most classical of living; French dramatists. His speech, like the rest of the twenty delivered at the Arc de Triomphe or in the Pantheon, will doubtless be published; but yesterday it was impossible to hear or attend to it or any of them. The crowd had something else to do. It was there to assert itself, one might almost say to enjoy itself; to testify to the solidarity of democratic Paris before the bier of the high priest of the democracy. That there was little mourning, in the true sense of the word, is not surprising. "Victor Hugo had lived beyond the limit commonly granted to men; his work was practically over; there was little more to expect from his talent, fresh and buoyant as he continued till the end. His funeral, to the mind of Paris, was an occasion of recognition, not regret; of apotheosis, not mourning. Thus it differed widely from Gambetta's funeral, which was that of a man cut off in his prime, and at the very moment when most was hoped for from him. In Gambetta's case people mourned the man, and they also mourned for France, deprived of one of the most helpful of her sons. Yesterday they but escorted one of the heroes of their country, at the end of his long life's work, to his last home.
Times, June 2, 1885
Central Asia 1885
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
