The coffin was carried along a narrow path bordered with dwarf cypresses, amid a murmuring of prayers: _"In paradisum deducant te Angeli, in tuo adventu susciptant te Martyres et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Jerusalem, Chorus Angelorum te suscipiat et cum Lazaro, quondam paupere, aeternam habeas requiem."_ Soon there was no longer any visible path. It was necessary, in following the quickly vanishing coffin, the priests and the choristers, to scatter, striding over the recumbent tombstones, and slipping between the broken columns and upright slabs. They lost the coffin and found it again. Nanteuil evinced a certain eagerness in her pursuit of it, anxious and abrupt, her prayer-book in her hand, freeing her skirt as it caught on the railings, and brushing past the withered wreaths which left the heads of immortelles adhering to her gown. Finally, the first to reach the graveside smelt the acrid odour of the freshly turned soil, and from the heights of the neighbouring flagstones saw the grave into which the coffin was being lowered. The actors had contributed liberally to the expenses of the funeral; they had clubbed together to buy for their comrade as much earth as he needed, two metres granted for five years. Romilly, on behalf of the actors of the Odeon, had paid the cemetery board 300 francs--to be exact, 301 fr. 80 centimes. He had even made plans for a monument, a broken stele with comedy masks suspended upon it. But no decision had been come to on this point. The celebrant blessed the open grave. And the priest and the boy choristers murmured the responses: "Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine." _"Et lux perpetua luceat ei."_ _"Requiescat in pace."_ _"Amen."_ _"Anima ejus et animae omnium fidelium defunctorum, per misericordiam Dei, requiescant in pace."_ _"Amen."_ _"De profundis...."_ Each one of those present came forward to sprinkle holy water on the coffin. Nanteuil stood watching it all, the prayers, the spadefuls of earth, the sprinkling; then, kneeling apart on the corner of a tomb, she fervently recited "Our Father who art in heaven...." Pradel spoke at the graveside. He refrained from making a speech. But the Theatre de l'Odeon could not allow a young artist beloved of all to depart without a word of farewell. "I shall speak therefore, in the name of the great and true-hearted dramatic family, the words that are in every bosom." Grouped about the speaker in studied attitudes, the actors listened with profound knowledge. They listened actively, with their ears, lips, eyes, arms, and legs. Each listened in his own manner, with nobility, simplicity, grief or rebelliousness, according to the parts which the actor was accustomed to play. No, the director of the theatre would not suffer the valiant actor, who, in the course of his only too brief career, had shown more than promise, to depart without a word of farewell.