succeeded in driving away one or two, six or eight sat down on the other side.” At the inauguration of Louis XI, in 1461, the precaution had been taken of closing the doors of the cathedral of Reims early and placing a guard there, so that not more persons should enter the church than the choir could hold. Nevertheless, the spectators so pressed round the altar where the king was anointed, that the prelates assisting the archbishop could scarcely move, and the princes of the blood were nearly squeezed to death in their seats of honour.
The passionate and violent soul of the age, always vacillating between tearful piety and frigid cruelty, between respect and insolence, between despondency and wantonness, could not dispense with the severest rules and the strictest formalism. All emotions required a rigid system of conventional forms, for without them passion and ferocity would have made havoc of life. By this sublimating faculty each event became a spectacle for others; mirth and sorrow were artificially and theatrically made up. For want of the faculty to express emotions in a simple and natural way, recourse must needs be had to æsthetic representations of sorrow and of joy.
The ceremonies accompanying birth, marriage and death fully assumed this character of spectacles. Æsthetic values have here taken the place of their old religious (pagan for the most part) or magic signification.
Nowhere does the formalizing of the emotions assume a more suggestive appearance than in the sphere of mourning rites. There is a tendency in primitive times to exaggerate the expression of grief, like that of joy. Pompous mourning is the counterpart of immoderate rejoicings and of insane luxury. At the death of Jean sans Peur the mourning is organized with incomparable magnificence, in which there was, no doubt, also a political by-purpose. The retinue escorting Philip of Burgundy, who went out to meet the kings of France and of England, carry two thousand black vanes, to say nothing of the standards and banners seven yards long, of the same colour. The carriage of the duke and also the state seats have been painted black for the occasion. At the meeting of Troyes, Philip wears a mantle of black velvet
