ured in old days from the enemy. They were, I thought,
the best and most solemn part of the show.

To suppose that the people were bound to be solemn during the ceremony
is to exact from them something quite needless and unnatural. The very
fact of a squeeze dissipates all solemnity. One great crowd is always,
as I imagine, pretty much like another. In the course of the last few
years I have seen three: that attending the coronation of our present
sovereign, that which went to see Courvoisier hanged, and this which
witnessed the Napoleon ceremony. The people so assembled for hours
together are jocular rather than solemn, seeking to pass away the weary
time with the best amusements that will offer. There was, to be sure,
in all the scenes above alluded to, just one moment--one particular
moment--when the universal people feels a shock and is for that second
serious.

But except for that second of time, I declare I saw no seriousness here
beyond that of ennui. The church began to fill with personages of all
ranks and conditions. First, opposite our seats came a company of fat
grenadiers of the National Guard, who presently, at the word of command,
put their muskets down against benches and wainscots, until the arrival
of the procession. For seven hours these men formed the object of the
most anxious solicitude of all the ladies and gentlemen seated on our
benches: they began to stamp their feet, for the cold was atrocious, and
we were frozen where we sat. Some of them fell to blowing their fingers;
one executed a kind of dance, such as one sees often here in cold
weather--the individual jumps repeatedly upon one leg, and kicks out the
other violently, meanwhile his hands are flapping across his chest. Some
fellows opened their cartouche-boxes, and from them drew eatables of
various kinds. You can't think how anxious we were to know the qualities
of the same. "Tiens, ce gros qui mange une cuisse de volaille!"--"Il a
du jambon, celui-la." "I should like some, too," growls an Englishman,
"for I hadn't a morsel of breakfast," and so on. This is the way, my
dear, that we see Napoleon buried.

Did you ever see a chicken escape from clown in a pantomime, and hop
over into the pit, or amongst the fiddlers? and have you not seen the
shrieks of enthusiastic laughter that the wondrous incident occasions?
We had our chicken, of course: there never was a public crowd without
one. A poor unhappy woman in a greasy plaid cloak, with a