Note 2 — BOOK XIII[1]

The following is the exact text of this letter, which Chateaubriand modified somewhat for publication:

"I have attended the first funeral ceremony for the Pope in the Church of St. Peter. It was a strange medley of indecency and grandeur. The strokes of the hammer nailing down a pope's coffin, some interrupted singing, the mingling of the light of the candles and the moon; lastly, the coffin raised by a pulley and hung in the shadows, to be laid across a door in the sarcophagus of Pius VII., whose ashes made room for those of Leo XII.: can you picture all this, and the ideas to which the scene gave birth?"—B.