AN OUTRAGE FROM WHICH HIS HIGH RANK DID NOT EXEMPT HIM

A rather realistic description of a funeral wake which was a stark reminder to Eugene of the Ash Wednesday words: “Remember that you are dust and unto dust you shall return.”

I was busy at home all morning. After dinner, I went to the Colonna palace to see Cardinal Ercolani, laid out in death on an ornamental bier. I expected to see a brilliant chapel, something magnificent. I saw only a large canopy on which was placed, at a great height, the body of the deceased cardinal in soutane, surplice and mantelletta with a red biretta on his head. The bier on which the body was placed was very vast, covered with a large golden cloth. Only four candles were burning around it. Many people filed past to see this spectacle which grieved me more than satisfied my curiosity, since, apart from the lackeys’ indifference which I noticed while passing through the first antechamber, I felt a kind of horror at seeing a number of flies devouring the eyes, nose and mouth of the deceased, an outrage from which his high rank did not exempt him no more than it will protect him from the voracity of the worms which will soon take charge of these remains as of a prey surrendered to them.

Roman Diary, 12 December 1825, EO XVII