If Foulon had appeared in the streets alive, surrounded by a troop of soldiers, the exasperated mob would have burst through the iron ring and have strangled the life out of him. Now he was dead, they respected his body.
Madame Berthier, observing the crowd outside of the church, turned to those nearest her, and asked,—
'Have you come to see my father buried? I am his daughter, and they never told me of his death. But that was Berthier's doing.'
No one answered her except with scowls.
'Let me pass,' said she to the Suisse at the gate; 'do you know that my father is being buried, and I was not told that he was ill or dead? Was not that cruel? Not that I loved him much. How could I? He never loved me. But I want to see him. Let me pass, good man.'
She was admitted, and mounted some of the steps. At that moment the coffin was borne out of the door, over which black drapery strewn with little silver flames had been suspended.
Her position in comparative isolation before the gloomy trappings and the coffin and mutes on one side, and the mob of spectators on the other, excited Madame Berthier's brain, and springing to the platform on which the body of her father rested, she turned to the people and addressed them, throwing up her veil at the same moment, and displaying her hideous leaden face.
The vision produced a murmur of horror and disgust.
'Ah ha! good souls,' she screamed; 'pray for the unfortunate. Did you love the dead? Answer me.'