All this with little ceremony to be sure, and less
distinction; for the Grand Duke suffers the pride of birth to last no
longer than life however, and demolishes every hope of the woman of
quality lying in a separate grave from the distressed object who begged
at her carriage door when she was last on an airing.
Let me add, that his liberality of sentiment extends to virtue on the
one hand, if hardness of heart may be complained of on the other. He
suffers no difference of opinions to operate on his philosophy, and I
believe we heretics here should sleep among the best of his Tuscan
nobles. But there is no comfort in the possibility of being buried alive
by the excessive haste with which people are catched up and hurried
away, before it can be known almost whether all sparks of life are
extinct or no. Such management, and the lamentations one hears made by
the great, that they should thus be forced to keep _bad company_ after
death, remind me for ever of an old French epigram, the sentiment of
which I perfectly recollect, but have forgotten the verses, of which
however these lines are no unfaithful translation;
I dreamt that in my house of clay,
A beggar buried by me lay;
Rascal! go stink apart, I cry'd,
Nor thus disgrace my noble side.
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