Here is an eye-witness’s account of the awful spectacle: “The next day the Church of the Estrella overflowed with spectators, and the corpse was exposed in full court dress, while the nobility came successively to kiss the hand!... Two of the young princesses were appointed by the King to the high honour of presiding, and four ladies-in-waiting performed the enviable office of tire-women to the corpse. It had been brought over from Brazil enclosed in three coffins, the inner one of lead, where it was laid, surrounded by aromatic herbs, gems, and essences.... One of the princesses fainted twice, and was too ill to reappear; but her sister was obliged to remain, while the ladies raised the body and completely reclothed it in a black robe, a dress cap, gloves, shoes, and stockings, and adorned it with four splendid orders upon the heart.” This throws a lurid light on the attitude still shown to the dead in some Latin-American countries. The bodies of the rich are treated with garish pomp; the bodies of the poor with shameful neglect, if not with contumely. [Illustration: THE CHURCH OF THE CANDELIERA, RIO.] Dom Pedro I was a daring, dashing monarch, with mercurial blood running in his veins. His attempts to establish absolutism irritated the Brazilians, who had now advanced too far along the path of political freedom to tolerate that sort of thing; so, in the struggle between people and ruler, the ruler got the worst of it. In 1831, cowed by the determined front which the troops and civilians presented, Pedro I abdicated in favour of his infant son, Dom Pedro de Atcantara. His was a curious type of character, and the most that can be said of him is that he made a showy figure on the South American stage, where showy figures have in the past been so abundant. His faults were not only political; in his private life he was far from being a paragon.