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Updated: June 22, 2025
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, Sr., to the grave. Perhaps, after all, we have been a bit hard on Payson, Jr.
The church was full. 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.
On Saturday the remains were borne to the White House, where they were embalmed and placed on a grand catafalque in the East Room. Little "Tad" was overcome with grief. All day Saturday he was inconsolable, but on Sunday morning the sun rose bright and beautiful and into his childish heart came the thought that all was well with his father. He said to a gentleman who called upon Mrs.
Prepare the catafalque in St. Martin's church, and place it before the altar! Put candles around it, as many as can be found! It is still early! Lieutenant! I am glad you are there! Rouse the cathedral priests and go to the bishop. I command a solemn requiem for my mother! Everything is to be arranged precisely as it was at the funeral of the Duchess of Aerschot!
He looked round for a chair in which to have a doze, as he was sure his wife would not leave before daylight. As soon as he became accustomed to the light of the room he distinguished the big bed with its azure-and-gold hangings, in the middle of the great room, looking like a catafalque in which love was buried, for the princess was no longer young.
The covers and the dishes would hide this horror. Passing her eyes scrutinizingly over the old seats, the walls with their loose papering and the chromos in greenish frames, she spied something dark, rectangular and deep occupying one corner of the room. She did not know whether it was a divan, a bed or a funeral catafalque.
Count Montholon was not suffered to leave his imprisonment for the occasion, though he also had been a companion of the Emperor at St. Helena. Around the catafalque marched the five hundred sailors of the "Belle Poule," headed by their captain, the Prince de Joinville, slender, tall, and dark, a very naval-looking man.
Still further down the steps and closer to the catafalque rest the familiar faces of many of our greatest generals the manly features of Augur, whose blood I have seen trickling forth upon the field of battle; the open almost, beardless contour of Halleck, who has often talked of sieges and campaigns with this homely gentleman who is going to the grave.
I had not known whither I should repair so distraught was my mood and now chance had settled the matter for me by decreeing that I should remain. I turned and slowly I paced back until I stood beside the great black catafalque, at each corner of which a tall wax taper was burning.
A million eyes had been less awful than those empty benches staring down in the cold dawn; bench after bench 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.
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