First, there were the motorcyclists with their silent blue flashing lights. Then came the hearse. The vehicle appeared on Rue Désiré-Delansorne in the center of Arras, northern France, before slowly passing the town hall. On the Gothic facade was a giant portrait of Dominique Bernard, the 57-year-old French teacher murdered on October 13 at his school by a radicalized former student. In the photo, he poses in front of a Greek or Roman statue. He's wearing a t-shirt and a backpack, with a travel guide in his hand. He is smiling.

What blue sky remained became overcast and when the religious ceremony began at 10:30 am on October 19, it suddenly started to rain. The area around Arras Cathedral, where the teacher's funeral was being held, was cordoned off and locked down. Stores were closed, and the police forces were everywhere. Around 1,000 people were allowed inside the cathedral: Bernard's relatives, students and teachers from the Gambetta school, a handful of officials, including the mayor of Arras, Frédéric Leturque, the president of the region, Xavier Bertrand, the education minister, Gabriel Attal, and French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte, who remained silent at the family's request.

Preceded by a Taizé cross carried by the school's students, the coffin entered the nave to Bach's "Sicilienne." "We are here with the whole nation, touched to the core," said Bishop of Arras Monsignor Olivier Leborgne. "We are here, powerless but together." In the front row, Dominique's wife Isabelle, also a teacher, was sitting with her three daughters, his sister Emmanuelle, five years his junior, his nephews and nieces, and his mother, Marie-Louise Bernard, sister of former Le Monde journalist and religion expert Henri Tincq. Marie-Louise's son liked to tease his mother, a practicing and devout Catholic: "It suits you to believe there's something after death." Dominique, having lost his faith, claimed that "religions only bring war." But he continued to read the Bible, of which he had two copies in his office.

"He loved Julien Gracq, Proust, Céline, Pierre Michon...," said Isabelle, in a clear voice. "He loved poetry, philosophy (...). Cinema, Truffaut, Kubrick. He loved the Baroque (...). Italy, Tuscany, Caravaggio. He loved Matisse, Gauguin, Soulages. He loved the Gothic (...). Provence, its colors, its scents. He loved the ponds, the rivers, the forests. He loved the evening light." The solitary, sensitive and discreet man, made Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur by the French President on Thursday, "didn't like social media, crowds, honors and ceremonies," said his wife, who summed up: "He didn't like the noise and rage of the world."

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