They dressed her in a beautiful gown of lawn that was as white and as sheer as a cloud, and covered with frills and laces that looked like foam. They put on her shoes, which were white too, and whose soles showed that they had taken but few steps. They braided her lovely dark chestnut hair, and arranged it gracefully about her head, intertwining it with blue ribbons. They tried to find fresh flowers, but the season was too far advanced, and there were none to be had; so they made her a wreath of artificial ones, selecting only those which were beautiful and which might have been mistaken for real blossoms just from the garden. Then a very repulsive man brought a box, just a trifle larger than the case of a violin, lined with blue silk and elaborately adorned with white satin and silver braid. Celinina was laid in it: an exquisite soft pillow was placed under her head, so that her position might not seem strained; and when she had been carefully and tenderly fixed in her funereal couch, they crossed her little hands, tied them together with a ribbon, and slipped a bunch of white roses between them,--roses so artistically fashioned that they seemed to be the very children of Spring. The women threw gorgeous draperies over a table, adorned it like an altar, and laid the coffin upon it. They arranged other altars, too, after the manner of church canopies, with fine white curtains, gracefully caught back on either side. They brought a great quantity of saints and images from other rooms, which they disposed with great art in symmetrical groups, forming a sort of funereal court around the departed angel. They also brought in, without losing a moment, the great candelabrum from the parlor, and lighted several dozen tapers, which shed their mournful glow upon Celinina. Then they kissed the child's frozen cheek again and again, and their pious task was done. II. From the other end of the house, from the depths of the bedrooms, came the moans of a man and a woman, the heart-rending lamentations of the parents who could not be convinced of the truth of those aphorisms about angels in heaven, administered by friends as a sort of moral sedative on these occasions. They believed, on the contrary, that this world is the proper and natural habitation for angels; nor could they admit the theory that the death of a grown person is far more lamentable and disastrous than that of a child. Mingled with their grief was that profound pity which the death-agony of an infant always inspires, and to them there was no sorrow in life like that which was tearing their very vitals. A thousand memories and painful visions struck at their hearts like so many daggers. The mother's ears rang with Celinina's lispings,--that enchanting baby-talk that gets everything wrong, and converts the words of our language into delicious philological caricatures, which caricatures, flowing from rosy mouths, are the tenderest and most affecting music to a mother's heart.