ntrance, on the steps of which stand the Heralds-at-Arms at the
obsequies of the kings, has been suppressed. The coffin of Louis XVIII.
was not placed on the iron trestles, where it rests to-day, at the time
of his funeral. It was put at the threshold of the vault, where it was
to have been replaced by that of Charles X.; for by the ancient
tradition, when a king of France dies, as his successor takes his place
on the throne, so he, in death, displaces his predecessor. But Louis
XVIII. waited in vain for Charles X. in the royal vault of the
Bourbons; the last brother of Louis XVI. reposes in the chapel of the
Franciscans at Goritz.

Charles X. is not alone in being deprived of his rights in his tomb;
the Duke and Duchess of Angouleme and the Count of Chambord were so,
and also Napoleon III. The second Emperor and Prince Imperial, his son,
sleep their sleep in England; for the Bonapartes, like the Bourbons,
have been exiled from Saint-Denis. By a decree of the 18th of November,
1858, the man who had re-established the Empire decided that the
imperial dynasty should have its sepulture in the ancient necropolis of
the kings. Napoleon III. no more, realized his dream than Napoleon I.
He had completed under his reign the magnificent vault destined for
himself and his race. But once more was accomplished the Sic vos non
vobis, and no imperial corpse has ever taken its place in the still
empty Napoleonic vault. The opening situated in the church, near the
centre of the nave, is at present closed by enormous flagstones framed
in copper bands; and as there is no inscription on these, many people
whose feet tread them in visiting the church do not suspect that they
have beneath them the stairway of six steps leading down to the vault
that was to be the burial place of emperors. "Oh, vanity! Oh,
nothingness! Oh, mortals ignorant of their destinies!" It is not enough
that contending dynasties dispute each other's crowns; their
covetousness and rivalry must extend to their tombs. Not enough that
sovereigns have been exiled from their country; they must be exiled
from their graves. Disappointments in life and in death. This is the
last word of divine anger, the last of the lessons of Providence.

V

THE KING

Born at Versailles, the 9th of October, 1757, Charles X., King of
France and Navarre, was entering his sixty-eighth year at the time of
his accession to the throne. According to the portrait traced by
Lamartine, "he