excerpt from 'Journal entry, 15 August 1828' pp. 335–36 (371 words)
excerpt from 'Journal entry, 15 August 1828' pp. 335–36 (371 words)
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Went (by admission ticket) to the church of Notre-Dame to see the King and all the royal family celebrate the day of the Virgin Mary, one of the greatest festivals in France. The town was in confusion the whole morning, with the rattling of carriages, ringing of bells, and bustling about of the civil and military; and about two o’clock the cathedral doors were opened, and those who had tickets were admitted, and, no doubt, also many without them in the general confusion. From two till near three we sat in the cathedral and saw all the different processions arrive: the counts, the peers, the mayor, the priests, the masters of ceremony, &c., and punctually at three the grand procession began to enter: the priests, the bishops, the marshals, the Duke and Duchess of Angouleme, and then the King, walking under a large canopy superbly ornamented. […] The ceremony performed in the cathedral was what they call vespers; an immoderate bellowing of the basest of base [sic] voices, with the blowing away of two serpents, and all the noise that hands and feet could bring forth from a huge rough-toned organ; and, by way of a finish, the silver Virgin Mary was started from the altar, and carried halfway over the town with all the procession from Charles X down to half the rabble of Paris, among such a noise and stink as a man may go his life and never hear or smell again. We thought the noise in the church pretty well, but it was a mere whisper to that out of it, particularly the bells, which would have almost drowned that of a cannonade. In short, this evangelical spree was kept up till about five, when the King arrived at the Tuileries in his state carriage; and his other carriage (with eight horses) was ready to take him back to St.-Cloud as soon as he had rid himself of the trappings for the levee of the silver Virgin. Although I am too great a ‘heretic’ (as the Spaniards would call me) to enter into the spirit of the Catholic religion, yet no one could say but the show was extremely well worth seeing. |
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