Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Friday, 27 June 1879

The whole of Thursday is lost for work, as we go to the mass at Saint-Augustin, of which you will find exact descriptions in the newspapers.
As for my personal part, I shall only tell you that I am turned out perfectly — all in black, with violets covered by black tulle on my hat.
We entered with the crowd and I did not see much — well yes, I saw Cassagnac, but from very far away. The church, bright and new, not even hung in black, was not in keeping with the occasion. Outside and inside the church, old women wept speaking of their sons who "can die like that." What do you make of the episode of the dove?
If one is a believer, one must believe in it more than in anything else — for if there is a pure and spotless soul, it is that of the Prince who has just died, to the eternal shame of the English and the tears that should be eternal on France's part. They may well say that all those newspapers have been eating from the Chislehurst manger for eight years. I grant their calculations, but I also grant the sincerity of their tears. Even the enemies of the Bonaparte family wept at this dreadful misfortune.
I am glad to note the universal sympathy toward a mother a hundred times over unfortunate, who is now paying for all those years of greatness. They say there were many idle sightseers — which is why the crowd was so large. One must be malicious and hateful to insinuate such perfidies!
There were too many violets and too many tears for that slander to hold. One felt on that day that we had lost the child of Paris, the child of France — whom everyone remembers having seen baptised, as a baby, as a little boy — and not merely a prince.
He had been too much in the public eye for one not to have become attached to him, more than one would think, and not to have considered him a little as one's own child.
Tarbé's idea of a French tomb is too beautiful not to be accused of childishness.