An unhappy strife has arisen even about his corpse. The
Government, with a feeling that was certainly seemly and pro- bably honourable to itself, offered him at once a public funeral in the Invalides, and the offer, it was understood, had been accepted by Madame Thiers. But when the arrangements came to be made, it seemed that Madame Thiers conditioned that the funeral should be at the Madeleine and not at the Invalides, which was clearly a matter for her discretion ; that the pall-bearers should be named by herself,—which was reasonable ; that the expense should be borne by herself,—which was hardly consistent with its being a public funeral at all ; and that the 363 Members of the Left in the late Assembly should immediately follow the coffin. It was not, of course, reasonable to expect that any Government would postpone itself, and the State which it claimed to represent, to the leaders of Opposition. So the public funeral will not take place. If Madame Thiers has been advised in this matter by the Republican leaders, we fear they have gone too far. It would have been only right to condition that Thiers' colleagues in the French Parliament should have had places of honour assigned to them, but hardly that they should take pre- cedence of the Executive. Moderation,—even ostentatious moderation,—is, we have elsewhere argued, the true cue of both parties at the present moment ; but this moderation, if it be moderation at all, is certainly not ostentatious.
