"Catafalque" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... possible, even more marked than in Philadelphia. The streets were so crowded that the procession moved with difficulty to the City Hall, where amid the chantings of eight hundred singers, the body was placed upon the catafalque prepared for it. Throughout the day and throughout the entire night the living tide of sorrowful humanity flowed past the silent form. At the solemn hour of midnight the German musical societies sang a funeral-hymn with an effect so impressive and touching that thousands of strong men were in tears. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... March with its intolerable genius had ceased. The coffin, guarded by flickering candles, lay on the lofty catafalque; the eight sergeants were pretending that their strength had not been in the least degree taxed. Princes, the illustrious, the champions of Allied might, dark Indians, adventurers, even Germans, surrounded the catafalque in the gloom. G.J. sympathised with the man in ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... where laboring men of both colors found means in their penury to afford some scanty show of mourning. The interest and veneration of the people still centered in the White House, where, under a tall catafalque in the East Room, the late chief lay in the majesty of death, and not at the modest tavern on Pennsylvania Avenue, where the new President had his lodging, and where Chief-Justice Chase administered the oath of office to him at eleven o'clock on ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... Friday night, April 6th, in his thirty-seventh year, and all Rome wept. He lay in state in his beautiful home, with his unfinished picture of the "Transfiguration," as background for his catafalque. That painting with its colours still wet, was carried in the procession to his burial place in the Pantheon. When his death was announced, the pope, Leo X., wept and cried "Ora pro nobis!" while the Ambassador from Mantua wrote home that "nothing is talked ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... during which rises, as if by magic, or from the crypts below, an immense catafalque, a colossal architectural structure, which fills the nave of that basilica illustrated by inscriptions, and adorned by statuary. Before this huge monument, for nine days funeral rites are performed, closed by a funeral oration. For the body of the last Pope there is a uniform resting-place ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... as the clergy were chanting the Libera me, Domine in St. Peter's, where the body was exposed on a catafalque in full pontificals, a riot occurred, set on foot by the soldiers present for reasons which Burchard—who records ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... in the Executive Mansion, which, for the first time, was shrouded in mourning. The coffin rested on a temporary catafalque in the centre of the East Room. It was covered with black velvet, trimmed with gold lace, and over it was thrown a velvet pall with a deep golden fringe. On this lay the sword of Justice and the sword of ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... after another began to adorn the blue islands in the cloudy firmament, and at last the full moon burst through the heavy banks of dark clouds, and shone in pure brilliancy above their heads, like a huge silver vessel in the black catafalque of a giant. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... It was with difficulty that Hermann made his way through the crowd of people. The coffin was placed upon a rich catafalque beneath a velvet baldachin. The deceased Countess lay within it, with her hands crossed upon her breast, with a lace cap upon her head, and dressed in a white satin robe. Around the catafalque stood the members of her household; the servants ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... the Signoria.... Ugo died in 1006, on the Feast of St. Thomas the Apostle, December 21, and every year on that date a solemn requiem for the repose of his soul is celebrated in the Abbey Church. His helmet and breast-plate are always laid upon the catafalque. In times past—down to 1859, I think—a young Florentine used on this occasion to deliver a panegyric on the Great Prince. I have heard ... that the mass is no longer celebrated. That is not so; but ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... thick, the vaulted roof tapering to about eighteen inches at the apex. Great holes had been knocked in the north-east side, and the rubbish had tumbled in, breaking the brass and iron grille round the catafalque. Beneath, covered by two huge blocks of stone, lay Mohamed Achmed's remains. Early that day violent hands were laid on the brass rails in the outer windows and grille. The catafalque was stripped of its black ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... cathedral church of San Siro on Good Friday they hang the columns and the windows with black; they cover the pictures and deface the altar; above the high altar they raise a crucifix, and below they place a catafalque with the effigy of the dead Christ. To this sad symbol they address their prayers and incense, chant their 'litanies and lurries,' and clash the rattles, which commemorate their rage against the traitor Judas. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... on. Heavy vapors creep up from the earth and obscure the air. Darker and denser clouds cover the heavens. Black shadows gather within the room. The bed looms out from the lighter walls like a funeral catafalque. ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... was under a catafalque which stood in the middle of the area. The semicircular space behind the steps of the altar was screened by a drapery of black cloth, which being festooned towards the middle, gave a partial view of the ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... lantern from the ground, and, with it raised above her head, approached the open coffin that rested on the catafalque in the centre of the tomb and mounted the two steps. She was conscious of no fear, of no dread at the idea of once more, after eighteen years, looking into the face of the man she had loved, who had carried ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... full of weeping, He faltered in his walk; Tom never shed a tear, But onward he did stalk, As pompous, black, and solemn, As any catafalque. ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... the foot of the catafalque surrounded by lights and covered with flowers, Durville, old Maury, Delage, Vicar, Destree, Leon Clim, Valrosche, Aman, Regnard, Pradel, Romilly, and Marchegeay, the manager. They were all there, Madame Ravaud, Madame Doulce, Ellen Midi, Duvernet, Herschell, Falempin, Stella, Marie-Claire, ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... repeating the horror of the featureless carvings by the entrance-gate—repeating it in series without end, and unbroken, save at one point midway along the semicircle on my right, where the imperial seat stood out, crowned like a catafalque with plumes of purple horse-hair, and screened close with heavy purple hangings. I saw these curtains shake once or twice in the ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... there is but one hour for me and thee, Autumn, for thee and thine hierophant, Of this grave ending chant. Round the earth still and stark Heaven's death-lights kindle, yellow spark by spark, Beneath the dreadful catafalque ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... we are confronted by a scene much more Oriental than anything we know of mediaeval Christianity: a sort of mosque with a huge dome, a circular set of Lockhart's Cocoa-rooms tables and benches; at the back a mysterious catafalque. The pure fool is pushed aside; Amfortas is carried in; he screams in agony of spirit; and then the service begins. It is a sheer burlesque of the Lord's Supper. When the last chords of the mysterious choir in the dome have died away, Gurnemanz asks Parsifal what he comprehends of it ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... girl's identity, and the reason for the tears which every one declared had flowed so copiously from the purple eyes that might have been stolen from the dead woman who lay upon the high, violet-strewn catafalque, surrounded by a ring of twinkling lights. Yet no one in that eagerly sacrilegious throng had the luck to perceive the most dramatic figure in the church: the shabbily dressed, middle-aged man who, hidden ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... ill-painted figure looking, as will sometimes happen to figures in the best ages of art, as if it had been boned for a pie, was called a fantoccio da cero, a tower-puppet; consequently improved taste, with Cecca to help it, had devised for the magnificent Zecca a triumphal car like a pyramidal catafalque, with ingenious wheels warranted to turn all corners easily. Round the base were living figures of saints and angels arrayed in sculpturesque fashion; and on the summit, at the height of thirty feet, well bound to an iron rod and holding an iron cross also firmly infixed, stood a living representative ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... after praising the prince's exploits in Greece, avows that, like Paris in Troy, and Alexander at Persepolis, Nero had gloriously fired Rome; he found it wood, and wished to leave it marble; (so, the catafalque at the Invalides of the twice-buried Corsican;) in destroying, as well as blessing, he had asserted his divinity; any after due allusions to Phoenixes, and fire-kingships, and coups-de-soliel falling from the same Apollo so great upon the guitar, Nattalis moves that ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... night in the basement of Platt's Hall. But preparedness was all that was needed. A few days later we took part in a most imposing procession. All the military and most other organizations followed a massive catafalque and a riderless horse through streets heavily draped with black. The line of march was long, arms were reversed, the sorrowing people crowded the way, and solemnity and grief on every hand told how deeply ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... remains of a great man. The funeral pyre dedicated by Alexander to his friend Hephaestion recalls that erected by Sardanapalus in one of the courts of his own palace, on which he perished, surrounded by his wives and his treasures. Hephaestion's catafalque was built of inflammable materials, 250 feet high, raised in many stories, and hung with pictorial tapestries, painted and embroidered. Each story was adorned with images of ivory and gold. In the upper ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... Church of the Holy Sepulchre is quite correct. The description could only have been given by one who knows the localities. But the Holy Sepulchre itself might easily have escaped the fire without a special miracle. It forms, in the middle of the circular nave of the church, a kind of catafalque of white marble: the cupola of cedar, in falling, might have crushed it, but could not have set it on fire. It is nevertheless a very extraordinary circumstance, and one worthy of much longer details than can be confined within ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... surface. In contrast with this brutal neglect of the poor, is the lavish expenditure of the rich. The daughter of one of the wealthy residents having died, the body was placed in a casket elaborately trimmed with blue satin, the catafalque also was covered with blue satin and trimmed with ruffles of satin and lace. In the funeral procession, the coffin was carried on the shoulders of several young men, while at the sides walked young ladies, each dressed in a blue satin gown with a long train and white veil, and each ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... been landed, was placed upon a catafalque, the cannon gave the signal to begin the march, and the procession started. The public was given to understand that in a sort of funeral casket blazing with gold and purple, on the top of the catafalque, twenty ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... was the external, visible, audible service: the catafalque, a bier-like erection, all black and yellow, guarded by yellow flames on yellow candles—the grave movements, the almost monstrous figures, the rhythm of the ceremonies, and the wail of, the music of forty voices singing as one—all that ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... Approaching the catafalque with silent tread, he stands for a time gazing at it without making any movement to mount up. Not from curiosity does he so regard it; but something akin to awe has stolen over his spirit, and ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... arabesques in vermilion, in a suit of black velvet, writing at a table under a lemon tree. Down the sun-scarred street, in the cathedral that was building in those days, full of a smell of scaffolding and stone dust, there must have stood a tremendous catafalque where lay with his arms around him the Master of Santiago; in the carved seats of the choirs the stout canons intoned an endless growling litany; at the sacristy door, the flare of the candles flashing occasionally on the jewels of his mitre, the bishop fingered his crosier restlessly, ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... de la Merced, was present, as were also all the royal chaplains, at the door of the royal chapel, with cross and wax tapers [ciriales] held aloft while the procession was entering. After they had entered, the royal crown was placed on its royal catafalque—or rather a funeral pyre of fire, crowned with candles as is the firmament with stars, where the brilliant and the majestic glowed in competition. I leave the description of that for the crown of this historical compilation. Those in the procession took possession ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... Sunday, September 18th. In the plaza a catafalque had been erected, draped in black. Upon it stood a casket covered with flowers. An immense crowd was about it, strangely silent. Across the platform a constant stream of people filed, each stopping a moment to gaze at a face that lay still and ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... a spiritual understanding—"reconciliation" would be inaccurate—with his son. So, Payson, Jr., protestingly acquired by part cash and balance credit a complete suit of what he scathingly described as "the barbarous panoply of death" and, turning himself into what he similarly called a "human catafalque," followed Payson, ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... filled her: her artistic sense was the one individuality she possessed. The chapel was aglow with the soft radiance of many wax candles. They stood in high candelabra against the somber drapery on the walls, and there were at least a hundred about the coffin on its high catafalque before the altar; the Argueellos were as prodigal as of old. About the catafalque was an immense mound of roses from the garden of the convent, and palms and pampas from the ranch of Santiago Argueello in the south. The black-robed scholars ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... little church, already filled with people. It was Sunday, and this early mass was to be a funeral one. The man for whom the bell was tolled last night was soon brought in, the coffin swathed in a common sheet. It was borne up the nave towards the catafalque, the rough carpentry of which showed how poor the parish was. Following closely was an old and bent woman with her head wrapped in a black shawl. She had hardly gone a few steps, when her grief burst out into the most dismal wailing I had ever heard, and throughout the service her melancholy ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... reigned in the Monte-Cristo palace—the silence of death. Everything was draped in mourning, and on a catafalque rested the bodies of ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... Monday morning, after a simple funeral ceremony at the Milburn mansion, the remains were reverently borne to the Buffalo City Hall, where, till midnight, mourning columns filed past the catafalque. The body lay in state under the Capitol rotunda at Washington for a day, and was borne thence, hardly a moment out of hearing of solemn bells or out of sight of half-masted flags and dumb, mourning multitudes, to the old home at Canton, ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... being in it not only a survival of various mediaeval procedures, but many elements of solemnity and beauty; and the funeral, which took place at the court church in the evening, was especially impressive. Before the high altar stood the catafalque; in front of it, the crown, scepter, orb, and other emblems of royalty; and at its summit, the coffin containing the body of the King. Around this structure were ranged lines of soldiers and pages in picturesque uniforms and bearing torches. Facing these were the seats for the ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... father hang about the doorways. His own ensigns are displayed in groups and trophies, with the banners of S. Mark, the Montefeltrian eagle, and the cross keys of S. Peter. The hall itself is vacant, save for the high-reared catafalque of sable velvet and gold damask, surrounded with wax candles burning steadily. Round it passes a ceaseless stream of people, coming and going, gazing at their Duke. He is attired in crimson hose and doublet of black damask. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... like a catafalque. Three wax tapers burned at the side of the table pushed against the wall beneath the portrait of Pere Bouvard, above which rose the death's-head. They had even stuffed a candle into the interior of the skull, and rays of light shot out ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... more touching proof of affection was shown in the poorest class of homes, where laboring men of both colors found means in their poverty to afford some scanty bit of mourning. The interest and veneration of the people still centered at the White House, where, under a tall catafalque in the East Room the late chief lay in the majesty of death, rather than in the modest tavern on Pennsylvania Avenue, where the new President had his lodgings, and where the Chief Justice administered the oath of office to him at ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... heard what had happened she clasped her hands over her head, and declared that Rosella's child should not be born until she unclasped her hands. Then the King of Love had a catafalque erected, and stretched himself on it as though he were dead, and had all the bells tolled, and made the people cry, "How did the King of Love die?" The ogress heard it, and asked: "What is that noise?" Her daughters told her that ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... construction of the thousands of hypogea and mummy pits which are to receive the mummies. Finally he shows us, passing through the streets of that strange city, the funeral procession of a royal scribe upon its catafalque, drawn by oxen,—the numberless mourners, the hosts of servants bearing alms and offerings. I regret that the length of that passage does not allow of my quoting it in full and enabling the reader to mark the union of a beautiful style with ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... of W. C. Brann were prepared early Saturday morning and lay in state all day at the residence on North Fifth Street. Hundreds of ladies visited the home and viewed the face of the Apostle. It was natural as life itself. He lay upon a catafalque in the parlors at home and the visitors passed around the lifeless form, looked upon the face and ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann |
