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$Pretitle{}
$Title{Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte And Life Of Josephine
Chapter XXIII}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Tarbell, Ida M.}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{napoleon
de
france
french
coffin
remains
prince
emperor
napoleon's
funeral}
$Date{1906}
$Log{}
Title:       Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte And Life Of Josephine
Book:        Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte
Author:      Tarbell, Ida M.
Date:        1906

Chapter XXIII

Second Funeral Of Napoleon - Removal Of Napoleon's Remains From St. Helena To
Banks Of The Seine In 1840

     It is my wish that my ashes may repose on the banks of the Seine,
     in the midst of the French people, whom I have loved so well.
                                        - Testament of Napoleon, 2d Clause.

          He wants not this; but France shall feel the want
          Of this last consolation, thought so scant;
          Her honor, fame, and faith demand his bones,
          To rear above a pyramid of thrones;
          Or carried onward, in the battle's van,
          To form, like Guesclin's dust, her talisman.
          But be it as it is, the time may come,
          His name shall beat the alarm like Ziska's drum.

               Byron, in The Age of Bronze.

     On May 12, 1840, Louis Philippe being king of the French people, the
Chamber of Deputies was busy with a discussion on sugar tariffs.  It had been
dragging somewhat, and the members were showing signs of restlessness.
Suddenly the Count de Remusat, then Minister of the Interior, appeared, and
asked a hearing for a communication from the government.

     "Gentlemen," he said, "the king has ordered his Royal Highness
Monseigneur the Prince de Joinville ^* to go with his frigate to the island of
St. Helena, there to collect the remains of the Emperor Napoleon."

[Footnote *: The Prince of Joinville was the Third son of Louis Philippe.]

     A tremor ran over the House.  The announcement was utterly unexpected.
Napoleon to come back!  The body seemed electrified, and the voice of the
minister was drowned for a moment in applause.  When he went on it was to say:

     "We have come to ask for an appropriation which shall enable us to
receive the remains in a fitting manner, and to raise an enduring tomb to
Napoleon."

     "Tres bien!  Tres bien!" cried the House.

     "The government, anxious to discharge a great national duty, asked
England for the precious treasure which fortune had put into her hands.

     "The thought of France was welcomed as soon as expressed.  Listen to the
reply of our magnanimous ally:

          "'The government of her Majesty hopes that the promptness of her
     response will be considered in France as a proof of her desire to efface
     the last traces of those national animosities which armed France and
     England against each other in the life of the emperor.  The government of
     her Majesty dares to hope that if such sentiments still exist in certain
     quarters, they will be buried in the tomb where the remains of Napoleon
     are to be deposited.'"

     The reading of this generous and dignified communication caused a
profound sensation, and cries of "Bravo!  bravo!" re-echoed through the hall.
The minister, so well received, grew eloquent.

     "England is right, gentlemen; the noble way in which restitution has been
made will knit the bonds which unite us.  It will wipe out all traces of a
sorrowful past.  The time has come when the two nations should remember only
their glory.  The frigate freighted with the mortal remains of Napoleon will
return to the mouth of the Seine.  They will be placed in the Invalides.  A
solemn celebration and grand religious and military ceremonies will consecrate
the tomb which must guard them forever.

     "It is important, gentlemen, that this august sepulchre should not remain
exposed in a public place, in the midst of a noisy and inappreciative
populace.  It should be in a silent and sacred spot, where all those who honor
glory and genius, grandeur and misfortune, can visit it and meditate.

     "He was emperor and king.  He was the legitimate sovereign of our
country.  He is entitled to burial at Saint-Denis.  But the ordinary royal
sepulchre is not enough for Napoleon.  He should reign and command forever in
the spot where the country's soldiers repose, and where those who are called
to defend it will seek their inspiration.  His sword will be placed on his
tomb.

     "Art will raise beneath the dome of the temple consecrated to the god of
battles a tomb worthy, if that be possible, of the name which shall be
engraved upon it.  This monument must have a simple beauty, grand outlines,
and that appearance of eternal strength which defies the action of time.
Napoleon must have a monument lasting as his memory. . . .

     "Hereafter France and France alone, will possess all that remains of
Napoleon.  His tomb, like his fame, will belong to no one but his country. The
monarchy of 1830 is the only and the legitimate heir of the past of which
France is so proud.  It is the duty of this monarchy, which was the first to
rally all the forces and to conciliate all the aspirations of the French
Revolution, fearlessly to raise and honor the statue and the tomb of the
popular hero.  There is one thing, one only, which does not fear comparison
with glory - that is liberty."

     Throughout this speech, every word of which was an astonishment to the
Chamber, sincere and deep emotion prevailed.  At intervals enthusiastic
applause burst forth.  For a moment all party distinctions were forgotten.
The whole House was under the sway of that strange and powerful emotion which
Napoleon, as no other leader who ever lived, was able to inspire.

     When the minister followed his speech by the draft of a law for a special
credit of one million francs, a member, beside himself with excitement, moved
that rules be laid aside and the law voted without the legal preliminaries.
The president refused to put so irregular a motion, but the House would not be
quiet.  The deputies left their places, formed in groups in the hemicycle,
surrounded the minister, congratulating him with fervor.  They walked up and
down, gesticulating and shouting.  It was fully half an hour before the
president was able to bring them to order, and then they were in anything but
a working mood.

     "The president must close this session," cried an agitated member; "the
law which has just been proposed has caused too great emotion for us to return
now to discussing sugar." But the president replied very properly, and a
little sententiously, that the Chamber owed its time to the country's
business, and that it must give it.  And, in spite of their excitement, the
members had to go back to their sugar.

     But how had it come about that the French government had dared burst upon
the country with so astounding a communication.  There were many explanations
offered.  A curious story which went abroad took the credit from the king and
gave it to O'Connell, the Irish agitator.  As the story went, O'Connell had
warned Lord Palmerston that he proposed to present a bill in the Commons for
returning Napoleon's remains to France.

     "Take care," said Lord Palmerston.  "Instead of pleasing the French
government, you may embarrass it seriously."

     "That is not the question," answered O'Connell.  "The question for me is
what I ought to do.  Now, my duty is to propose to the Commons to return the
emperor's bones.  England's duty is to welcome the motion.  I shall make my
propositions, then, without disturbing myself about whom they will flatter or
wound."

     "So be it," said Lord Palmerston.  "Only give me fifteen days."

     "Very well," answered O'Connell.

     Immediately Lord Palmerston wrote to Monsieur Thiers, then at the head of
the French Ministry, that he was about to be forced to tell the country that
England had never refused to return the remains of Napoleon to France, because
France had never asked that they be returned.  As the story goes, Monsieur
Thiers advised Louis Philippe to forestall O'Connell, and thus it came about
that Napoleon's remains were returned to France.

     The grande pensee, as the idea was immediately called, seems, however, to
have originated with Monsieur Thiers, who saw in it a means of reawakening
interest in Louis Philippe.  He believed that the very audacity of the act
would create admiration and applause.  Then, too, it was in harmony with the
claim of the regime; that is, that the government of 1830 united all that was
best in all the past governments of France, and so was stronger than any one
of them.  The mania of both king and minister for collecting and restoring
made them think favorably of the idea.  Already Louis Philippe had inaugurated
galleries at Versailles, and hung them with miles of canvas, celebrating the
victories of all his predecessors.  In the gallery of portraits he had placed
Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI. beside Madame Roland, Charlotte Corday,
Robespierre, and Napoleon and his marshals.

     He had already replaced the statute of Napoleon on the top of the Column
Vendome.  He had restored cathedrals, churches, and chateaux, put up statues
and monuments, and all this he had done with studied indifference to the
politics of the individuals honored.

     Yet while so many little important personages were being exalted, the
remains of the greatest leader France had ever known, were lying in a far-
away island.  Louis Philippe felt that no monument he could build to the
heroes of the past would equal restoring Napoleon's remains.

     The matter was simpler, because it was almost certain that England would
not block the path.  The entente cordiale, whose base had been laid by
Talleyrand nearly ten years earlier, had become a comparatively solid peace,
and either nation was willing to go out of the way, if necessary, to do the
other a neighborly kindness.  France was so full of good will that she was
even willing to ask a favor.  Her confidence was well placed. Two days after
Guizot, then the French minister to England, had explained the project to Lord
Palmerston, and made his request, he had his reply.

     The remains of the "emperor" were at the disposition of the French. Of
the "emperor," notice!  After twenty-five years England recalled the act of
her ministers in 1815, and recognized that France made Napoleon emperor as
well as general.

     The announcement that Napoleon's remains were to be brought back,
produced the same effect upon the country at large that it had upon the
Chamber - a moment of acute emotion, of all-forgetting enthusiasm.  But in the
Chamber and the country the feeling was short-lived.  The political aspects of
the bold movement were too conspicuous.  A chorus of criticisms and
forebodings arose.  It was more of Monsieur Thiers' clap-trap, said those
opposed to the English policy of the government.  What particularly angered
this party, was the words "magnanimous ally" in the minister's address.

     The Bonapartes feigned to despise the proposed ceremony.  It was
insufficient for the greatness of their hero.  One million francs could not
possibly produce the display the object demanded.  Another point of theirs was
more serious.  The emperor was the legitimate sovereign of the country, they
said, quoting from the minister's speech to the Chamber, and they added: "His
title was founded on the senatus consultum of the year 12, which, by an equal
number of suffrages, secured the succession to his brother Joseph.  It was
then unquestionably Joseph Bonaparte who was proclaimed emperor of the French
by the Minister of the Interior, and amid the applause of the deputies."

     Scoffers said that Louis Philippe must have discovered that his soft
mantle of popularity was about worn out, if he was going to make one of the
old gray redingote of a man whom he had called a monster.  The Legitimists
denied that Napoleon was a legitimate sovereign with a right to sleep at
Saint-Denis like a Bourbon or a Valois.  The Orleanists were wounded by the
hopes they saw inspired in the Bonapartists by this declaration.  The
Republicans resented the honor done to the man whom they held up as the
greatest of all despots.

     There was a conviction among many that the restoration was premature, and
probably would bring on the country an agitation which would endanger the
stability of the throne.  It was tempting the Bonaparte pretensions certainly,
and perhaps arousing a tremendous popular sentiment to support them.

     While the press and government, the clubs and cafes, discussed the
political side of the question, the populace quietly revived the Napoleon
legend.  Within two days after the government had announced its intentions,
commerce had begun to take advantage of the financial possibilities in the
approaching ceremony.  New editions of the "Lives" of Napoleon which Vernet
and Raffet had illustrated, were advertised.  Dumas' "Life" and Thiers'
"Consulate and Empire" were announced.  Memoirs of the period, like those of
the Duchesse d'Abrantes and of Marmont, were revived.

     As on the announcement of Napoleon's death in 1821, there was an
inundation of pamphlets in verse and prose; of portraits and war compositions,
lithographs, engravings, and wood-cuts; of thousands of little objects such as
the French know so well how to make.  The shops and street carts were heaped
with every conceivable article a la Napoleon. The legend grew as the people
gazed.

     On July 7th the "Belle Poule," the vessel which was to conduct the Prince
de Joinville, the commander of the expedition, to St. Helena, sailed from
Toulon accompanied by the "Favorite." In the suite of the Prince were several
old friends of Napoleon: the Baron las Cases, General Gourgaud, Count
Bertrand, and four of his former servants.  All these persons had been with
him at St. Helena.

     The Prince de Joinville had not received his orders to go on the
expedition with great pleasure.  Two of his brothers had just been sent to
Africa to fight, and he envied them their opportunities for adventures and
glory; and, besides, he was sick of a most plebeian complaint, the measles.
"One day as I lay in high fever," he says in his "Memoirs," "I saw my father
appear, followed by Monsieur de Remusat, then Minister of the Interior.  This
unusual visit filled me with astonishment, and my surprise increased when my
father said, 'Joinville, you are to go out to St. Helena and bring back
Napoleon's coffin.' If I had not been in bed already I should have fallen down
flat, and at first blush I felt no wise flattered when I compared the warlike
campaign my brothers were on with the undertaker's job I was being sent to
perform in the other hemisphere. But I served my country, and I had no right
to discuss my orders."

     If the young prince was privately a little ashamed of his task, publicly
he adapted himself admirably to the occasion.

     A voyage of sixty-six days brought the "Belle Poule," on October 8th, to
St. Helena, where she was welcomed by the English with every honor. Indeed,
throughout the affair the attitude of the English was dignified and generous.
They showed plainly their desire to satisfy and flatter the pride and
sentiment of the French.

     It had been decided that the exhumation of the body and its transfer to
the French should take place on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the arrival of
Napoleon at the island.  The disinterment was begun at midnight on October
15th, the English conducting the work, and a number of the French, including
those of the party who had been with Napoleon at his death, being present.
The work was one of extraordinary difficulty, for the same remarkable
precautions against escape were taken in Napoleon's death as had been in his
life.

     The grave in the Valley of Napoleon, as the place had come to be called,
was surrounded by an iron railing set in a heavy stone curb.  Over the grave
was a covering of six-inch stone which admitted to a vault eleven feet deep,
eight feet long, and four feet eight inches broad.  The vault was apparently
filled with earth, but digging down some seven feet a layer of Roman cement
was found; this broken, laid bare a layer of rough- hewn stone ten inches
thick, and fastened together by iron clamps.  It took four and one-half hours
to remove this layer.  The stone up, the slab forming the lid of the interior
sarcophagus was exposed, enclosed in a border of Roman cement strongly
attached to the walls of the vault.  So stoutly had all these various
coverings been sealed with cement and bound by iron bands, that it took the
large party of laborers ten hours to reach the coffin.

     As soon as exposed the coffin was purified, sprinkled with holy water,
consecrated by a De Profundis, and then raised with the greatest care, and
carried into a tent which had been prepared for it.  After the religious
ceremonies, the inner coffins were opened.  "The outermost coffin was slightly
injured," says an eye witness; "then came one of lead, which was in good
condition, and enclosed two others - one of tin and one of wood.  The last
coffin was lined inside with white satin, which, having become detached by the
effect of time, had fallen upon the body and enveloped it like a
winding-sheet, and had become slightly attached to it.

     "It is difficult to describe with what anxiety and emotion those who were
present waited for the moment which was to expose to them all that was left of
the Emperor Napoleon.  Notwithstanding the singular state of preservation of
the tomb and coffins, we could scarcely hope to find anything but some
misshapen remains of the least perishable part of the costume to evidence the
identity of the body.  But when Dr. Guillard raised the sheet of satin, an
indescribable feeling of surprise and affection was experienced by the
spectators, many of whom burst into tears.  The emperor himself was before
their eyes!  The features of the face, though changed, were perfectly
recognizable; the hands extremely beautiful; his well-known costume had
suffered but little, and the colors were easily distinguished.  The attitude
itself was full of ease, and but for the fragments of satin lining which
covered, as with fine gauze, several parts of the uniform, we might have
believed we still saw Napoleon lying on his bed of state."

     A solemn procession was now formed, and the coffin borne over the rugged
hills of St. Helena to the quay.  "We were all deeply impressed," says the
Prince de Joinville, "when the coffin was seen coming slowly down the mountain
side to the firing of cannon, escorted by British infantry with arms reversed,
the band playing, to the dull rolling accompaniment of the drums, that
splendid funeral march which English people call the Dead March in Saul."

     At the head of the quay, the Prince de Joinville, attended by the
officers of the French vessels, was waiting to receive the remains of the
emperor.  In the midst of the most solemn military funeral rites the French
embarked with their precious charge.  "The scene at that moment was very
fine," continues the prince.  "A magnificent sunset had been succeeded by a
twilight of the deepest calm.  The British authorities and the troops stood
motionless on the beach, while our ship's guns fired a royal salute.  I stood
in the stern of my long-boat, over which floated a magnificent tricolor flag,
worked by the ladies of St. Helena.  Beside me were the generals and superior
officers.  The pick of my topmen, all in white, with crape on their arms, and
bareheaded like ourselves, rowed the boat in silence, and with the most
admirable precision.  We advanced with majestic slowness, escorted by the
boats bearing the staff.  It was very touching, and a deep national sentiment
seemed to hover over the whole scene."

     But no sooner did the coffin reach the French cutter than mourning was
changed to triumph.  Flags were unfurled, masts squared, drums set a- beating,
and salvos poured from ports and vessels.  The emperor had come
back to his own!

     Three days later the "Belle Poule" was en route for France.  One incident
alone marked her return.  A passing vessel brought the news that war had been
declared between France and England.  The Prince de Joinville was only
twenty-two, a hot-headed youth, and the news of war immediately convinced him
that England had her fleet out watching for him, ready to carry off Napoleon
again.  He rose to the height of his fears.  The elegant furnishings of the
saloons of his vessel were torn out and thrown overboard to make room for the
batteries; the men were made ready for fighting, and everybody on board was
compelled to take an oath to sink the vessel before allowing the remains to be
taken.  This done, the "Belle Poule" went her way peacefully to Cherbourg,
where she arrived on November 30th, forty-three days after leaving St. Helena.

     The town of Cherbourg owes much to Napoleon - her splendid harbors, and
great tracts of land rescued from the sea - and she honored the return of his
remains with every pomp.  Even the poor of the town were made to rejoice by
lavish gifts in the emperor's honor; and one of the chief squares - one he had
redeemed from the sea - became the Place Napoleon.

     The vessels lay eight days at Cherbourg, for the arrival had been a
fortnight earlier than was anticipated, and nothing was ready for the
celebration at Paris; but the time was none too long for the thousands who
flocked in interminable processions to the vessels.  When the vessels left for
Havre, Cherbourg was so excited that she did what must have seemed to the
nervous inhabitants an extravagance, even in Napoleon's honor, she fired a
thousand guns!

     The passage of the flotilla from Cherbourg to Paris took seven days. At
almost every town and hamlet elaborate demonstrations were made.  At Havre and
Rouen they were especially magnificent.

     A striking feature of the river cortege was the ceremonies at the various
bridges under which the vessels passed.  The most elaborate of these was at
Rouen, where the central arch of the suspension bridge had been formed into an
immense arch of triumph.  The decorations were the exclusive work of wounded
legionary officers and soldiers of the Empire. When the vessel bearing the
coffin passed under, the veterans showered down upon it wreaths of flowers and
branches of laurel.

     These elaborate and grandiose ceremonies were not, however, the really
touching feature of the passage.  The hillsides and river-banks were crowded
with people from all the surrounding country, who sometimes even pressed into
the river in order better to see the vessels.  Those on the flotilla saw aged
peasants firing salutes with ancient muskets, old men kneeling with uncovered
heads on the sod, and others, their heads in their hands weeping - these men
were veterans of the Empire paying homage to the passage of their hero.

     It was on the afternoon of December 14th, just as the sun was setting
radiantly behind Mt. Valerian, that the flotilla reached Courbevoie, a few
miles from Paris, where Napoleon's body was first to touch French soil. The
bridge at Courbevoie, the islands of Neuilly, the hills which rise from the
Seine, were crowded, far as the eye could reach, with a throng drawn from the
entire country around.

     The flotilla as it approached was a brilliant sight.  At the head was the
"Dorade," a cross at her prow, and, behind, the coffin.  It was draped in
purple velvet, surrounded by flags and garlands of oak and cypress, and
surmounted by a canopy of black velvet ornamented with silver and masses of
floating black plumes.  Between cross and coffin stood the Prince de Joinville
in full uniform, and behind him Generals Bertrand and Gourgaud and the Abbe
Coquereau, almoner of the expedition.  The vessels following the "Dorade" bore
the crews of the "Belle Poule" and the "Favorite" and the military bands.  A
magnificent funeral boat, on whose deck there was a temple of bronzed wood,
hung with splendid draperies of purple and gold, brought up the official
procession.  Behind followed numberless craft of all descriptions.  Majestic
funeral marches and salvos of artillery accompanied the advance.

     At Courbevoie the flotilla anchored.  Notwithstanding the intense cold,
thousands of people camped all night on the hill-sides and shores, their
bivouac fires illuminating the landscape.

     Only those who have seen Paris on the day of a great fete or ceremony can
picture to themselves the 15th of December, 1840.  The day was intensely cold,
eight degrees below the freezing point, but at five o'clock in the morning,
when the drums began beating, and the guns booming, the populace poured forth,
taking up their positions along the line of the expected procession.  This
line was fully three miles in length, and ran from Courbevoie to the Arc de
Triomphe by way of Neuilly, thence down the Champs Elysees, across the Place
and Bridge de la Concorde, and along the quai to the Esplanade des Invalides.
From one end to the other it was packed on either side a hundred deep, before
nine o'clock.  The journals of the day compute the number of visitors expected
in Paris as about half a million.  Inside and outside of the Hotel des
Invalides alone, thirty-six thousand places were given to the Minister of the
Interior, and that did not cover one-tenth of the requests he received.  It is
certain that nearly a million persons saw the entry of Napoleon's remains.
The people hung from the trees, crowded the roofs, stood on ladders of every
description, filled the windows, and literally swarmed over the walks and
grass plots.  A brisk business went on in elevated positions.  A ladder rung
cost five francs ($1.00); the man who had a cart across which he had laid
boards, rented standing-room at from five to ten francs.  As for windows and
balconies - they sold for fabulous prices, in spite of the fact that the
placard fenetres et balcons a louer appeared in almost every house from
Neuilly to the Invalides, even in many a magnificent hotel of the Champs
Elysees.  Fifty francs ($10.00) was the price of the meanest window; a good
one cost one hundred francs ($20.00); three thousand francs ($600.00) were
paid for good balconies.  One speculator rented a vacant house for the day for
five thousand francs ($1,000.00), and made money on his investment.

     The crowd made every preparation to keep warm; some of them carried
foot-stoves filled with live coals, others little hand-warmers.  At intervals
along the procession great masses of the spectators danced to keep up their
circulation.  Vendors of all sorts of articles did a thriving business.  Every
article was, of course, Napoleonized; one even bought gauffrettes and
Madeleines cut out in the shape of Napoleons. There were badges of every form
- imperial eagles, bees, crowns, even the petit chapeau.  Many pamphlets in
prose and verse had a great sale, especially those of Casimir Delavigne,
Victor Hugo, and Barthelemy; though all these stately odes were far
outstripped by one song, thousands upon thousands of copies of which were
sold.  It ran:

          "Premier capitaine du monde
          Depuis le siege de Toulon,
          Tant sur la terre que sur l'onde
          Tout redoutait Napoleon.

          Du Nil au nord de la Tamise!
          Devant lui l'ennemi fuyait,
          Avant de combattre, il tremblait
          Voyant sa redingote grise."

     The cortege which had brought this crowd together was magnificent in the
extreme.  A brilliant military display formed the first portion: gendarmerie,
municipal guards, officers, infantry, cavalry, artillery, cadets from the
important schools, national guards.  But this had little effect on the crowd.
The genuine interest began when Marengo, Napoleon's famous battle-horse,
appeared - it was not Marengo, but it looked like him, which for spectacular
purposes was just as well; and the saddle and bridle were genuine.  The defile
now became exciting.  The commission of St. Helena appeared in carriages, then
the Marshals of France, the Prince de Joinville, the crews of the vessels
which had been to St. Helena, finally the funeral car, a magnificent creation
over thirty feet high, its design and ornaments symbolic.  Sixteen black
horses in splendid trappings drew the car, whose funeral pall was held by a
marshal and an admiral of France, by the Duc de Reggio and General Bertrand.

     The passing of the car was everywhere greeted with sincere emotion,
profound reverence.  Even the opposition recognized the genuineness of the
feeling; many of them owned to sharing it for one moment of self-
forgetfulness, and they began to ask themselves, as Lamartine had asked the
Chamber six months before, what they had been thinking of to allow the French
heart and imagination to be so fired?  Even cynical Englishmen who looked on
with stern or contemptuous countenances, said to themselves meditatively that
night, as they sat by their fire resting, "Something good must have been in
this man, something loving and kindly, that has kept his name so cherished in
the popular memory and gained him such lasting reverence and affection."

     Following the car came those who had been intimately associated with the
emperor in his life - his aides-de-camp and civil and military officers.  Many
of them had been with him in famous battles; some were at Fontainebleau in
1814, others at Malmaison in 1815.  The veterans of the Imperial Guard
followed; behind them as deputation from Ajaccio.

     From Courbevoie to the Hotel des Invalides, one walked through a hedge of
elaborate decorations - of bees, eagles, crowns, N's; of bucklers, banners,
and wreaths bearing the names of famous victories; of urns blazing with
incense; of rostral of flags; flaming tripods; allegorical statues; triumphal
arches; great banks of seats draped in imperial purple and packed with
spectators, and phalanges of soldiers.

     On the top of the Arc de Triomphe was an imposing apotheosis of Napoleon.
Each side of the Pont de la Concorde was adorned with huge statutes.  On the
Esplanade des Invalides the car passed between an avenue of thirty-two statute
of great French kings, heroes, and heroines - Charles Martel, Charlemagne,
Clovis, Bayard, Jeanne d'Arc, Latour d'Auvergne, Ney.  The chivalry and valor
of France welcomed Napoleon home. Oddly enough, this hedge of statues ended in
one of Napoleon himself; the incongruity of the arrangements struck even the
gamins.  "Tiens," cried one urchin, "voila comme l'empereur fait la queue a
lui-meme." ("Hello, see there how the emperor brings up his own procession.")

     The procession passed quietly from one end to the other of the route, to
the great relief of the authorities.  Difficulty was anticipated from several
sources: from the Anglophobes, the Revolutionists, the Legitimists, and
Bonapartists, and the great mass of dissatisfied, who, no matter what form of
the rule they are under, are always against the government.  The greatest fear
seems to have been on the part of the English.  Thackeray, who was in town at
the time, gives an amusing picture of his own nervousness on the morning of
the 15th.

          "Did the French nation, or did they not, intend to offer up some of
     us English over the imperial grave?  And were the games to be concluded by
     a massacre?  It was said in the newspapers that Lord Granville had
     despatched circulars to all the English residents in Paris, begging them
     to keep their homes.  The French journals announced this news, and warned
     us charitably of the fate intended for us.  Had Lord Granville written?
     Certainly not to me.  Or had he written to all except me?  And was I
     victim - the doomed one?  to be seized directly I showed my face in the
     Champs Elysees, and torn in pieces by French patriotism to the frantic
     chorus of the Marseillaise?  Depend on it, Madame, that high and low in
     this city on Tuesday were not altogether at their ease, and that the
     bravest felt no small tremor.  And be sure of this, that as his Majesty
     Louis Philippe took his nightcap off his royal head that morning, he
     prayed heartily that he might at night put it on in safety."

     Fortunately Thackeray's courage conquered, and so we have the
entertaining "Second Funeral of Napoleon," by "Michael Angelo Titmarsh."

     In spite of all forebodings, the hostile displays were nothing more than
occasional cries of "A bas les Anglais," a few attempts to promenade the
tricolor flag and drown Le Premier Capitaine de Monde by the Marseillaise, and
a strong indignation when it was learned that the representatives of the
allies had refused to be present at the final ceremony.

     Most of the observers of the funeral attributed the good order of the
crowd to the cold.  A correspondent of the "National Intelligence" of that
date says:

          "If this business had fallen in the month of June or July, with all
     its excitements, spontaneous and elaborate, I should have deemed a
     sanguinary struggle between the government and the mob certain or highly
     probable.  The present military array might answer for an approaching army
     of Cossacks.  Forty or fifty thousand troops remain in the barracks within
     the camps without, besides the regular soldiery and National Guards in the
     field, ready to act against the domestic enemy."

          "Providentially the cold increased to the utmost keenness; the genial
     currents of the insurrectionary and revolutionary soul were frozen."

     The climax of the pageant was in the temple of the Invalides.  The
spacious church was draped in the most magnificent and lavish fashion, and
adorned with a perfect bewilderment of imperial emblems.  The light was shut
out by hangings of violet velvet; tripods blazing with colored flames, and
thousands upon thousands of waxen candles in brilliant candelabra lighted the
temple.  Under the dome, in the place of the altar, stood the catafalque which
was to receive the coffin.

     From early in the morning the galleries, choir, and tribunes of the
Invalides were packed by a distinguished company.  There were the Deputies and
Senators - neither of which had been represented in the cortege - the judicial
and educational bodies, the officers of army and navy, the ambassadors and
representatives of foreign governments, the king, and the court.

     But none of these dignitaries were of more than passing interest that
day.  The centre of attention, until the coffin entered, was the few old
soldiers of the Empire to be seen in the company; most prominent of these was
Marshal Moncey, the decrepit governor of the Invalides.

     It was two o'clock in the afternoon when the Archbishop of Paris,
preceded by a splendid cross-bearer, and followed by sixteen incense boys and
long rows of white-clad priests, left the church to meet the procession.  They
returned soon.  Following them were the Prince de Joinville and a select few
from the grand cortege without, attending Napoleon's coffin.

     As it passed, the great assemblage was swayed by an extraordinary
emotion.  There is no one of those who have described the day who does not
speak of the sudden, intense agitation which thrilled the company, whether he
refers to it half-humorously as Thackeray, who told how "everybody's heart was
thumping as hard as possible," or cries with Victor Hugo:

          Sire: En ce monent-la, vouz aurez pour royaume,
               Tous les fronts, tous les coeurs qui battront sous le ciel,
          Les nations feront asseoir votre fantome,
               Au trone universel."

     The king descended from his throne and advanced to meet the cortege.
"Sire," said the Prince of Joinville, "I present to you the body of Napoleon,
which, in accordance with your commands, I have brought back to France."

     "I receive it in the name of France," replied Louis Philippe.

     Such at least is what the "Moniteur" affirms wa said, but the "Moniteur"
is an official journal whose business is, not to tell what really happens, but
what the government would prefer to have happen.  The Prince de Joinville
gives a different version: "The king received the body at the entrance to the
nave, and there rather a comical scene took place. It appears that a little
speech which I was to have delivered when I met my father, and also the answer
he was to give me, had been drawn up in council, only the authorities had
omitted to inform me concerning it.  So when I arrived I simply saluted with
my sword, and then stood aside.  I saw, indeed, that this silent salute,
followed by retreat, had thrown something out; but my father after a moment's
hesitation, improvised some appropriate sentence, and the matter was arranged
in the 'Moniteur.'"

     Beside the king stood an officer, bearing a cushion; on it lay the sword
of Austerlitz.  Marshal Soult handed it to the king, who, turning to Bertrand,
said:

     "General, I commission you to place the emperor's glorious sword on the
bier."

     And Bertrand, trembling with emotion, laid the sword reverently on his
idol's coffin.  The great company watched the scene in deepest silence.  The
only sound which broke the stillness was the half-stifled sobs on the
gray-haired soldiers of the Invalides, who stood in places of honor near the
catafalque.

     The king and the procession returned to their places, and then followed a
majestic funeral mass.  The Requiem of Mozart, as rendered that day by all the
great singers of Paris, is one of the historic musical performances of France.
The archbishop then sprinkled the coffin with holy water, the king taking the
brush from his for the same sacred duty.

     The funeral was over.  Napoleon lay at last "on the banks of the Seine,
among the people whom he had so loved." For eight days after the ceremony the
church remained open to the public, and in spite of the terrible cold
thousands stood from morning until night waiting patiently their turn to
enter.  After hours of waiting, they frequently were sent away, only to come
back earlier the next day In this company were numbers of veterans of the
imperial army who had made the journey to Paris from distant parts of the
kingdom.  In the delegation from Belgium were many who had walked part of the
way, not being able to pay full coach fare.

     Banquets and dinners followed the funeral.  At one of these, a "sacred
toast to the immortal memory" was drunk kneeling.  In a dozen theatres of
Paris the translation of the remains was dramatized.  At the Porte
Saint-Martin, the actor who took the part of Sir Hudson Lowe had a season of
terror, he being in constant danger of violence from the wrought-up audience.

     The advertising columns of the newspapers of the day blazed for weeks
with announcements of Napoleonized articles; the holiday gifts prepared for
the booths of the boulevards and squares, and for the magnificent shops of the
Palais Royal and the fashionable streets, whatever their nature - to et, to
wear, to look at - were made up as memorials.  Paris seemed to be
Napoleon-mad.

     In the February following the funeral, the coffin of Napoleon was
transferred from the catafalque in the centre of the church to a chapelle
ardente in the basement at one side.  The chapel was richly draped in silk and
gold, and hung with trophies.  On the coffin lay the imperial crown, the
emperor's sword, and the hat which he had worn at Eylau, and which he had
given to Gros when he ordered the battle of Eylau painted.  Over the coffin
waved the flags taken at Austerlitz.

     Here Napoleon's body lay until the mausoleum was finished.  This
magnificent structure was designed by Visconti, the eminent architect, who had
planned the entire decorations of the 15th of December.  Visconti utterly
ignored the appropriations in executing the monument, ordering what he wanted,
regardless of its cost.  For the marble from which Pradier made the twelve
colossal figures around the tomb, he sent to Carrara; the porphyry which was
used to inclose the coffin, he obtained in Finland.

     In this magnificent sepulchre Napoleon still sleeps.  Duroc and Bertrand
lie on either side of the entrance to the chamber, guarding him in death as in
life; and to the right and left of the entrance to the church are the tombs of
his brothers Jerome and Joseph.  On the stones about him are inscribed the
names he made glorious! over him are draped scores of trophies; attending him
are the veterans of the Invalides.

               "Qu'il dorme en paix sous cette voute!
               C'est un casque bien fait, sans doute,
               Pour cette tete de geant."