Cortege:
- A train of attendants, as of a distinguished person; a retinue.
- A ceremonial procession.
- A funeral procession.
Noted in “Notre Dame tells a story of quarreling, not unity. That’s why it unites the French.” Robert D. Zaretsky, WaPo:
The medieval cathedral, of course, was not burning. Intact, it instead welcomed Charles de Gaulle on Aug. 26, when the commander of the Free French forces and de facto president of France led a victory march from the Arc de Triomphe to Notre Dame. Greeted along the way by a mass of jubilant Parisians and the occasional sniper, the cortege filed into the cathedral to hear the “Te Deum.” The hymn was first performed at Notre Dame in 1467 to commemorate the eviction of the English from French soil — a celebration repeated every year until 1793, when leaders of the French Revolution decided that a cathedral was no place to praise the nation.
