The enormous English newspapers are full of endless articles framed in black. The Queen, who outlived several generations and during whose reign the country so radically changed its aspect, is dead. The period that England is living through at the moment – the period that has bred its cultured savages, its all-powerful gutter press and other phenomena – has left its mark on the obituaries too. The Queen's name is accompanied by strong adjectives, in the superlative degree to boot: she is ‘the greatest’, ‘the wisest’, ‘the most brilliant’, etc. The authors of the obituaries attribute even the recent rains to ‘heaven itself weeping for the greatest of monarchs’. They then proceed to speak of the grief-stricken Englishmen, of the ‘gloom of despair hanging over London’, of ‘the country's great loss’, etc. The court Pindar, the Poet Laureate Austin, speaks of the victories she achieved, of ‘Semiramis of the northern seas’.

I think our readers will find it interesting to pick through the piles of funerary literature and ascertain to what extent we foreigners, as people of a different parish, can accept these strong adjectives. First, let us go to the London Forum, to Hyde Park. It is Saturday, the second of February. Today, the Queen's remains will be carried through London and on to Windsor, where she will be buried alongside the Prince Consort. The endless park and all the streets converging on it are flooded by a living sea. All the shops, factories, houses, offices and banks are shut (on the initiative of the owners themselves). Hundreds of thousands of working people have now taken to the streets. Moreover, since yesterday trains have been bringing in provincials who have spent the whole night in the street. There are several million people in the park and the adjoining avenues. On the roofs, on the balconies, in the windows, on the ledges, everywhere one can drag some seats, there are thousands of spectators who have shown up with binoculars, with baskets full of victuals and with bottles of whisky.