terruptedly as
far as the Boulevard St. Denis, although, as yet, there were few houses
on it. I have seen a good many displays of bunting in my time; I have
seen Turin and Florence and Rome beflagged and decorated on the
occasions of popular rejoicings; I have seen historical processions in
the university towns of Utrecht and Leyden; I have seen triumphal
entries in Brussels; I was in London on Thanksgiving day, but I have
never beheld anything to compare with the wedged masses of people along
the whole of the route, as far as the Bois de Boulogne, on that Saturday
afternoon. The whole of the suburban population had, as it were, flocked
into Paris. The regulars lined one side of the whole length of the
Boulevards, the National Guards the other. And there was not a single
house from the station to the southernmost corner of the Rue Royale
that had not its emblems, its trophies, its inscriptions of "welcome."
With that inborn taste which distinguishes the Parisians, the decorator
had ceased trying to gild the gold and to paint the lily at that point,
and had left the magnificent perspective to produce its own effect--a
few Venetian masts along the Avenue de Champs-Elysees and nothing more.
Among the notable features of the decorations in the main artery of
Paris was the magnificent triumphal arch, erected by the management of
the Opera between the Rue de Richelieu and what is now the Rue Drouot.
It rose to the fourth stories of the adjacent houses, and looked, not a
temporary structure, but a monument intended to stand the wear and tear
of ages. No description could convey an idea of its grandeur. The inside
was draped throughout with bee-bespangled purple, the top was decorated
with immense eagles, seemingly in full flight, and holding between their
talons proportionately large scutcheons, bearing the interlaced
monograms of the Imperial hosts and the Royal guests. In front of the
Passage de l'Opera stood an allegorical statue, on a very beautiful
pedestal draped with flags; and further on, at the back of the
Opera-Comique, which really should have been its front,[75] an obelisk,
the base of which was a correct representation, in miniature, of the
Palais de l'Industrie (the then Exhibition Building). By the Madeleine a
battalion of the National Guards had erected, at their own cost, two
more allegorical statues, France and England. A deputation from the
National Guards had also presented her Majesty with a magnificent
bou