riences. Next
day the royal party went to the Exposition Universelle, then going
on in Paris, and afterwards, while the queen was receiving the
ambassadors, the emperor drove the Prince of Wales through the
streets of Paris; he afterwards took his older guests sight-seeing
in his capital. "As we crossed the Pont de Change," writes the
queen, "the emperor said, pointing to the Conciergerie, 'That is
where I was in prison." He alluded to the time when he was brought
from Strasburg to Paris, before being shipped for Rio Janeiro.
"Strange," continues the queen, "to be driving with us as emperor
through the streets of Paris in triumph!"

They visited Versailles (where the queen sketched), and afterwards
went to the Grand Opera. They saw Paris illuminated that night
as they drove back to Saint-Cloud, the emperor and Prince Albert
recalling old German songs; and the queen says: "The emperor seems
very fond of his old recollections of Germany. There is much that
is German, and very little--nothing, in fact--markedly French in
his character."

One day all the royal party went out in a hack carriage, with what
the queen calls "common bonnets and veils," and drove incognito
round Paris. Sometimes they talked politics, sometimes they seem
to have joked and laughed with childish glee and enjoyment; and one
night the emperor took the queen by torchlight to see the tomb of
his great uncle at the Invalides. A guard of old warriors who had
served under Napoleon, with Santini, his valet at St. Helena, at
their head, escorted the queen of England to the chapel where stood
Napoleon's coffin, not yet entombed, with the sword of Austerlitz
lying upon it. The band in the chapel was playing "God Save the
Queen," while without raged a sudden thunder-storm.

The mornings were devoted to quiet pleasures and sight-seeing,
the evenings to operas, state dinners, and state balls. The great
ball given on this occasion in the galleries of Versailles was
talked of in Paris for years after. "The empress," says the queen,
"met us at the top of the staircase, looking like a fairy-queen or
nymph, in a white dress trimmed with bunches of grass and diamonds,
a beautiful _tour de corsage_ of diamonds round the top of her
dress, and all _en riviere_; the same round her waist, and a
corresponding headdress, and her Spanish and Portuguese orders.
The emperor said when she appeared: 'Comme tu es belle!'"

Next day, as the emperor drove the queen in an open c