Page:Juarez and Cesar Cantú (1885).djvu/47

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47

transfer it to his country. Respectable persons, who have been appointed to this effect by the Government of the Republic and by that of Austria, will carry out this sad operation and the commission will be executed with all due decorum and with the respecful attention which ought to be rendered to the dead and which the culture of our people demands.

«The body is very well embalmed; and although a thousand calumnies have been uttered abroad respecting the condition in which it is, we are able to assert that it does not show any important decomposition, apart from the natural alterations which ought to result after the cesassion of life, such as the darkening of the skin and the partial falling of the hair; but in every other respect it is in the best condition of preservation that could be expected. The doctors who have taken care of preserving the body, have been especially diligent in doing every thing that was within their power to counteract the destructive work of climatic influences which act against the safest preparations known to science to avoid putrefaction, and they have succeeded, for the body has not undergone any remarkable alterations.

«The body is dressed in black, and rests on velvet cushions, in a rosewood coffin, elegantly and handsomely worked, showing the good taste and ingenuouness of the builder. On the lid, a cross is worked in relief, inter twined in vine leaves, and this alone constitutes, in the idea and the execution, a very handsome ornament. As it is to be supposed, the rest of the work, in its details, is not inferior to the principal part, and shows no fault worth mentioning. This coffin is deposited in a zinc case, which excludes the air, and both are contained in another case made of cedar, which although intended only for a mere provissional covering, has been made with no less careful attention. A especial car has also been prepared in which all this can be carried, and in the interior, as well as in the exterior, all has been done in such a manner as to prevent jolting during the voyage on land and by sea, from sha-