rrounds it. It is hung
with velvet and gold; four gold caryatides support the entry of it; and
in the midst, upon a large platform hung with velvet, and bearing the
imperial arms, stood the coffin. A steamboat, carrying two hundred
musicians playing funereal marches and military symphonies, preceded
this magnificent vessel to Courbevoie, where a funereal temple was
erected, and "a statue of Notre Dame de Grace, before which the seamen
of the 'Belle Poule' inclined themselves, in order to thank her for
having granted them a noble and glorious voyage."

Early on the morning of the 15th December, amidst clouds of incense,
and thunder of cannon, and innumerable shouts of people, the coffin
was transferred from the barge, and carried by the seamen of the "Belle
Poule" to the Imperial Car.

And, now having conducted our hero almost to the gates of Paris, I must
tell you what preparations were made in the capital to receive him.

Ten days before the arrival of the body, as you walked across the
Deputies' Bridge, or over the Esplanade of the Invalides, you saw on
the bridge eight, on the esplanade thirty-two, mysterious boxes erected,
wherein a couple of score of sculptors were at work night and day.

In the middle of the Invalid Avenue, there used to stand, on a kind of
shabby fountain or pump, a bust of Lafayette, crowned with some dirty
wreaths of "immortals," and looking down at the little streamlet which
occasionally dribbled below him. The spot of ground was now clear, and
Lafayette and the pump had been consigned to some cellar, to make way
for the mighty procession that was to pass over the place of their
habitation.

Strange coincidence! If I had been Mr. Victor Hugo, my dear, or a poet
of any note, I would, in a few hours, have made an impromptu concerning
that Lafayette-crowned pump, and compared its lot now to the fortune
of its patron some fifty years back. From him then issued, as from his
fountain now, a feeble dribble of pure words; then, as now, some faint
circles of disciples were willing to admire him. Certainly in the
midst of the war and storm without, this pure fount of eloquence went
dribbling, dribbling on, till of a sudden the revolutionary workmen
knocked down statue and fountain, and the gorgeous imperial cavalcade
trampled over the spot where they stood.

As for the Champs Elysees, there was no end to the preparations; the
first day you saw a couple of hundred scaffoldings erected at interval