I Do Not Know If Philip's Funeral Urn Was Ever Opened.
He stayed above
ground too long as it was, and it is probable that people have never
cared to look upon his face again.
All that was human had died out of
him years before his actual demise, and death seemed not to consider it
worth while to carry off a vampire. Go into the little apartment where
his last days were passed; a wooden table and book-shelf, one arm-chair
and two stools - the one upholstered with cloth for winter, the other
with tin for summer - on which he rested his gouty leg, and a low chair
for a secretary, - this was all the furniture he used. The rooms are not
larger than cupboards, low and dark. The little oratory where he died
looks out upon the high altar of the Temple. In a living death, as if by
an awful anticipation of the common lot it was ordained that in the
flesh he should know corruption, he lay waiting his summons hourly for
fifty-three days. What tremendous doubts and fears must have assailed
him in that endless agony! He had done more for the Church than any
living man. He was the author of that sublime utterance of uncalculating
bigotry, "Better not reign than reign over heretics." He had pursued
error with fire and sword. He had peopled limbo with myriads of rash
thinkers. He had impoverished his kingdom in Catholic wars. Yet all this
had not sufficed.
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