Service stills the world From slow ahead in mid-Atlantic to a wake in the South Seas, the melancholy impact is felt

Illustrating her reach across international, cultural, and social borders, yachts in ''millionaires' piers'' on the French Riviera lowered flags to half mast as ordinary people everywhere left flowers and tributes.

Live images of the funeral went out to 60 countries. Broadcasters think the watchers could have totalled 2.5 billion. Radio reports were transmitted in at least 44 languages.

Others around the world remembered her in their own way, from candlelit vigils in the US to a traditional wake on the South Sea island of Tonga.

In Poland, where the funeral was broadcast live, a prominent sociologist, Professor Lena Kolarska-Bobinska, said: ''For years many people have got to know Diana better than their own neighbours or colleagues.

''She was different from most average people because she attended fancy balls, travelled aboard yachts and belonged to the upper class. But she was also the same as us because she too had problems with her husband, her mother-in-law and herself with which she had to cope. For many women she became a model of how to cope.

''In a world devoid of values and ideals, she filled a void. The reaction to her death shows how much people are seeking values and role models.''

In San Francisco, some 14,000 people marched through the city in a candlelight procession on Friday night to pay tribute to Diana. Most walked in silence until the end of the march where they were greeted by a recording of Elton John's Candle in the Wind. President Bill Clinton, in his weekly radio address, linked Diana with the memory of Mother Teresa. ''Their lives were very different but ultimately bound together by a common concern for, and commitment to, the dignity and worth of every human being, especially those too often overlooked, the desperately poor and abandoned, the sick and dying,'' said Mr Clinton, who was on holiday at Martha's Vineyard and woke before dawn to watch the princess's funeral with his daughter Chelsea.

Also up early to watch were many of the passengers on the QE2, a day-and-a-half out of New York on a voyage to England. A newsman aboard reported that the captain slowed the liner's speed across the Atlantic to stay within the reception zone for satellite broadcasts of the funeral.

Cleve Jones, creator of the Aids memorial quilt which remembers the thousands of people who have died of Aids, said San Franciscans had a special place in their hearts for Diana.

''We who are living with HIV and Aids specially remember Diana's courage during the darkest days of the epidemic when her country and our own were swept by bigotry, hatred, and hysteria,'' Jones told the crowd.

''It was then that Diana visited a hospice and with ungloved hands embraced a gay man dying of Aids. That image of simple compassion flashed across the world and changed the way the world saw Aids.''

Bosnian landmine victims joined in the mourning, saying Diana's humanitarian visit to their country last month had helped focus attention on the suffering caused by mines.

''I feel as if someone from my own family has died. I miss her very much,'' said Predrag Minov, 40, a mine victim who met Diana last month.

Other landmine victims in Angola also joined in the mourning, saying they wished their government had given them as much care as Diana had shown when she began her anti-mine crusade there in January.

Many of the victims she visited at a prosthesis centre in the capital, Luanda, were unable to watch her funeral on television because of an electricity black-out in parts of the city.

Among the million of people across the world tuning in to the funeral was a mother in Thailand who called Diana ''the most loved princess in the world''.

In Tonga, itself a monarchy, a group of Diana's devotees held a traditional wake, or pongipongi, after the funeral.

''Diana was a very kind princess who helped poor people in all the nations, poor people like us in Tonga,'' said wake organiser and songwriter Kilisimasi Mounga.

In Paris, locals and tourists laid bouquets, candles, and messages near the mouth of the road tunnel where she died.

''Goodbye to the real Queen of England,'' read one in English.

Young and old, men and women filed around the flowers reading the tributes and pausing to look over the parapet of the tunnel.

Brushing away her tears, one French woman said: ''I watched the funeral on television this afternoon. I have never done anything like this before, but I felt it necessary to come here.''

Another said: ''I want to be here for Lady Di. We must say goodbye and wish her well.''

After a week of apportioning blame for the accident which killed the Princess of Wales, and increasingly bizarre speculation about the circumstances, French newspapers yesterday adopted a more sombre approach in reporting the funeral.

Conspiracy theories which had filled pages of paper in the last few days were forgotten as the Sunday editions carried front page photographs of the millions of people lining the route in London to Westminster Abbey.

Beneath the headline ''London pays its last respects to the princess of the people'', Le Monde said: ''In a state of fervour the like of which the country has rarely known, Great Britain paid its last respects on Saturday to Diana, Princess of Wales.''

The broadsheet Le Journal du Dimanche carried the headline: ''Goodbye to the princess of the people.''

In an inside page it said: ''Tragic, moving, and beautiful. Her last journey brought millions of Britons to tears as the young princess became the stuff of legend.'' Other papers carried photographs of Princes William and Harry following the funeral cortege into Westminster Abbey. Many papers in comment columns and other pages asked what would now become of the monarchy.

Le Monde said: ''The Queen has been incapable of taking the measure of the immense change which has happened in the country over the last 20 years. The people want her to offer something more than a fusty old dynasty.''

Le Journal du Dimanche commented on the huge outpouring of grief and emotion which few French people seemed to think the British possessed.

Its columnist Caroline Tossan said: ''The people of Britain came together in silence and their hearts beat in unison.''

Spain spent one of its most sombre weekends in recent times in the shadow of the massive television coverage from London.

''A dark cloud has been hanging over the country,'' said Madrid restaurant owner Miguel Garcia yesterday. His staff had served only five diners on Saturday, instead of the usual 50.

There was little spirit at hundreds of village summer fiestas. At Pedraza, in the mountains north of Madrid, only a handful of people were in the square and the village band was not playing.

The traditional bull run at Foios, near Valencia, on the south-east coast, was delayed until after the funeral because everyone was watching television.

Singer Michael Jackson dedicated the last concert of his European tour to the princess. He walked on to the stage between two enormous screens carrying images of Diana at the football stadium in Valladolid, in north central Spain, and sang You Are Not Alone. But only some 20,000 of an expected 50,000 were in the mood to listen to the star. Many of the beaches along the Costas and in the holiday islands attracted only a few sunseekers.

At Benidorm, which normally throbs around the clock at weekends, British bar owner Iain Reed said: ''It's eerie, almost weird. I have never known anything like it in the 13 years I've been here.''

Guests stayed in hotels packing television lounges. ''Ninety percent of my 970 guests have not moved from the hotel,'' said Jose Mirapeix at the one-star Rio Park in the resort. ''It's been sad everywhere. I hope now that the funeral is over people will at least cheer up a bit.''