Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals: In Two Volumes, Volume I.Morse, Samuel Finley Breese
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Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals: In Two Volumes, Volume I.
Morse, Samuel Finley Breese
Morse, Samuel Finley Breese, 1791-1872; Telegraph
"At Dijon we stopped over the Sabbath, for the double purpose of avoiding
travelling on that day and from really needing a day of rest. On Sunday
morning we enquired of our landlord, Mons. Ripart, of the Hôtel du Parc,
for a Protestant church, and were informed that there was not any in the
place. We learned, however, afterwards that there was one, but too late
to profit by the information. We walked out in the cold to find some
church, and, entering a large, irregular Gothic structure, much out of
repair, we pressed towards the altar where the funeral service of the
Catholic Church was performing over a corpse which lay before it. The
priests, seven or eight in number, were in the midst of their ceremonies.
They had their hair shorn close in front, but left long behind and at the
sides, and powdered, and, while walking, covered partially with a small,
black, pyramidal velvet cap with a tuft at the top. While singing the
service they held long, lighted wax tapers in their hands. There was much
ceremony, but scarcely anything that was imposing; its heartlessness was
so apparent, especially in the conduct of some of the assistants, that it
seemed a solemn mockery. One in particular, who seemed to pride himself
on the manner in which he vociferated 'Amen,' was casting his eyes among
the crowd, winking and laughing at various persons, and, from the
extravagance of his manners, bawling out most irreverently and closing by
laughing, I wondered that he was not perceived and rebuked by the
priests.
"As the procession left the church it was headed by an officer bearing a
pontoon;[1] then one bearing the silver crucifix; then eight or ten boys
with lighted wax tapers by the side of the corpse; then followed the
priests, six or eight in number, and then the relatives and friends of
the deceased. At the grave the priests and assistants chanted a moment,
the coffin was lowered, the earth thrown upon it, and then an elder
priest muttered something over the grave, and, with an instrument
consisting of a silver ball with a small handle, made the sign of the
cross over the body, which ceremony was repeated by each one in the
procession, to whom in succession the instrument was handed.
[Footnote 1: This must be a mistake.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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