[77] He sleeps: we will leave him alone: I will come again early to-morrow. [78] He is dead; he that was so good! [79] It is for the father to do that. [80] All the worthy people of the city of Avignon. [81] I answer to you for his salvation; it was a fruit ripe for heaven: God has gathered it, and placed it in his granary. CHAP. XIX. On the morning of the funeral, M. Breugne called a little before ten o'clock, the time appointed to the clergy, led me up into my son's chamber, made there a long visit, gave me to understand the hour to be earlier than it really was, returned into the salon, and kept me there for some time in conversation. When he had retired, I went down to the room where the body of Kenelm had lain: it was gone. I stood some time lamenting the disappointment of my purposed farewell; blaming the well-meant and successful efforts of Breugne to deprive me of this sorrowful satisfaction, and renewing the impression of the view I had taken the preceding evening of that which I was to behold no more. The crucifix lay on the table; I took it up; and, before leaving the room, was preparing to extinguish the tapers which were, by chance as I thought, left burning. The femme-de-chambre called out to me, "Monsieur, il ne faut pas faire cela: les cierges lient la famille à ce qui se fait dans l'église."[82] It is easy to call this arrangement superstitious: there was good sense, and a sense of decorum in thus declaring, by external signs, our participation in the office in which we had so dear a concern. Whatever man loves or esteems highly, he endeavours to represent to himself by symbols. Friends set a great value on those tokens of friendship which they may have received as presents; even to become accidentally possessed of any object, however trifling, that belonged to a friend, is a cause of pleasure. Portraits are precious, not merely as works of art, but as reminding us of those whom we delight to remember; and none refuse to venerate the images of saints, but those who make no account of the saints themselves. In Italy, in the salons of ambassadors, I have seen the thrones of their several sovereigns, to connect by these emblems the representatives with the represented,--ceremonial so necessary to the maintenance of authority, that the Spanish minister told his king, "Your Majesty's self is nothing but a ceremonial;"--etiquette so essential to the good order of society, that not even the most unpolished réunion subsists without it: these are but modes of expressing meaning by signs. In war, in politics, in civil contracts, in common life, men universally thus express themselves; and why not in religion? Those who quarrel with the shadow are angry with the substance that throws it.