FUNERALS AND THE BOMBARDMENT.

Grey River Argus, Volume XI, Issue 914, 1 July 1871, Page 3

FUNERALS AND THE BOMBARDMENT.

The following anecdote is recorded by the Paris correspondent of the Daily Neios: — " On Wednesday last a hearse, drawn by two black horses, drew up before the church which faces what used to be the Hippodrome in Paris. The coachman was all alone with the coffin ; no mutes, no mourners, no attendants of any kind. What could it mean 1 The door of the" church was opened ; the priest and the sexton came out, and after inquiry took the coffin into the church. The explanation of the unwonted spectacle was as follows : — ln the Rue Duret, which abuts on the Avenue de la Grande Arme'e at the one end, and on the Avenue de l'lmpe'ratrice at the other, there lived an old maid who was apparently friendless, and who, although very ill, was abandoned by her relatives when the shells from Fort Valerien began to pour upon that part of the town, scattering death and destruction around. Fear and neglect added to sickness, the poor old woman died in her distress, and the men of the Pompes Funebres came to bury her, as they are bound, j When all was ready and the hour of the funeral drew near, the people of the neighborhood put their heads out of their hiding places and told the undertakers to beware, as the shells had been dropping, round all the morning. The undertakers,' however, who have a sad, determined way of going to work, went on with their business as if they did not know what death meant. Suddenly a shell burst close to the house, and the undertakers were in a moment scared out of their callousness. 'Quick, quick,' said the Commissary; 'Look sharp.' Without more ado the corpse was pressed into the coffin ; the coffin was trotted down stairs and rammed into the hearse. The coachman sat devoutly on the box in a cold perspiration. The friends and acquaintances of the deceased old lady hover nervously about the hearse, preparing to follow, when bang conies another shell. All take to their heels, and the coachman, lashing his horses, whisks away at a gallop, arriving at the church alone."