According to M.Bigourd's expression it was both crowded and select.

In the front rank was to be seen M.de la Bertheoseille, Chamberlain to his Highness Prince Crucho.
Near the pulpit, which was to be ascended by the Reverend Father Douillard, of the Order of St.Francis, were gathered, in an attitude of attention with their hands crossed upon their wands of office, the great dignitaries of the Anti-Pyrotist association, Viscount Olive, M.de La Trumelle, Count Clena, the Duke d'Ampoule, and Prince des Boscenos.
Father Agaric was in the apse with the teachers and pupils of St.Mael College.

The right-hand transept and aisle were reserved for officers and soldiers in uniform, this side being thought the more honourable, since the Lord leaned his head to the right when he died on the Cross.

The ladies of the aristocracy, and among them Countess Clena, Viscountess Olive, and Princess des Boscenos, occupied reserved seats.
In the immense building and in the square outside were gathered twenty thousand clergy of all sorts, as well as thirty thousand of the laity.
After the expiatory and propitiatory ceremony the Reverend Father Douillard ascended the pulpit.

The sermon had at first been entrusted to the Reverend Father Agaric, but, in spite of his merits, he was thought unequal to the occasion in zeal and doctrine, and the eloquent Capuchin friar, who for six months had gone through the barracks preaching against the enemies of God and authority, had been chosen in his place.
The Reverend Father Douillard, taking as his text, "He hath put down the mighty from their seat," established that all temporal power has God as its principle and its end, and that it is ruined and destroyed when it turns aside from the path that Providence has traced out for it and from the end to which He has directed it.
Applying these sacred rules to the government of Penguinia, he drew a terrible picture of the evils that the country's rulers had been unable either to prevent or to foresee.
"The first author of all these miseries and degradations, my brethren," said he, "is only too well known to you.