Then the king came forward, and, having placed on the coffin of his child a wreath of white flowers, left the church to return to the palace. He was terribly moved, and had difficulty in restraining his tears until he should have regained his carriage. The Mass for the Dead was then resumed, and lasted for an hour and a-half; and it was two hours before the funeral ceremonies were finally completed. On the following Wednesday, the church of Ste Gudule and St Michel at Brussels, having been hung in the same lavish manner with black and white, a second Grand Mass was said and sung there for the repose of the little prince’s soul; and then the whole business was over, and people began to talk of something else. But it will be a long time before Belgium forgets her Prince Royal or the bereavement of her king. The funeral was, perhaps, as grand a one as ever was given for a child, and the decorations of the churches, biers, and coffin, things to be remembered; but the way in which true Belgians will love best to think of Leopold-Ferdinand, Duc de Brabant, will be the recollection, treasured by his father and mother—the recollection of a pure dead face, freed from all suffering and pain, lying on its once familiar bed, a little virgin clasped in the inanimate hand, and a wreath of white roses laid upon the pillow; but above all, of a happy soul freed from the suffering of sin, and in the enjoyment of a kingdom from the possession of which the temptations attendant upon wearing an earthly crown might have debarred him. THE END. [Illustration] LITTLE WHITE SOULS. I am going to tell you a story which is as improbable an one as you have ever heard. I do not expect anybody to believe it; yet it is perfectly true. The ignorant and bigoted will read it to the end perhaps, and then fling it down with the assertion that it is all nonsense, and there is not one word of truth in it. The wiser and more experienced may say it is very wonderful and incredible, but still they know there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in their philosophy. But no one will credit it with a hearty, uncompromising belief. And yet neither ridicule nor incredulity can alter the fact that this is a true history of circumstances that occurred but a few years since, and to persons who are living at the present time. The scene is laid in India, and to India, therefore, I must transplant you in order that you may be introduced to the actors in this veracious drama, premising that the names I give, not only of people but of places, are all fictitious.