We visited the Hotel des Invalides just as they were preparing the sarcophagus for the reception of the remains of Napoleon.  We witnessed the wild excitement of that enthusiastic people, and listened with deep interest to the old soldiers’ praises of their great general.  The ladies of our party chatted freely with them.  They all had interesting anecdotes to relate of their chief.  They said he seldom slept over four hours, was an abstemious eater, and rarely changed a servant, as he hated a strange face about him.  He was very fond of a game of chess, and snuffed continuously; talked but little, was a light sleeper,—­the stirring of a mouse would awaken him,—­and always on the watch-tower.  They said that, in his great campaigns, he seemed to be omnipresent.  A sentinel asleep at his post would sometimes waken to find Napoleon on duty in his place.

The ship that brought back Napoleon’s remains was the Belle Poule (the beautiful hen!), which landed at Cherbourg, November 30, 1840.  The body was conveyed to the Church of the Invalides, which adjoins the tomb.  The Prince de Joinville brought the body from Saint Helena, and Louis Philippe received it.

At that time each soldier had a little patch of land to decorate as he pleased, in which many scenes from their great battles were illustrated.  One represented Napoleon crossing the Alps.  There were the cannon, the soldiers, Napoleon on horseback, all toiling up the steep ascent, perfect in miniature.  In another was Napoleon, flag in hand, leading the charge across the bridge of Lodi.  In still another was Napoleon in Egypt, before the Pyramids, seated, impassive, on his horse, gazing at the Sphinx, as if about to utter his immortal words to his soldiers:  “Here, forty centuries look down upon us.”  These object lessons of the past are all gone now and the land used for more prosaic purposes.

I little thought, as I witnessed that great event in France in 1840, that fifty-seven years later I should witness a similar pageant in the American Republic, when our nation paid its last tributes to General Grant.  There are many points of similarity in these great events.  As men they were alike aggressive and self-reliant.  In Napoleon’s will he expressed the wish that his last resting place might be in the land and among the people he loved so well.  His desire is fulfilled.  He rests in the chief city of the French republic, whose shores are washed by the waters of the Seine.  General Grant expressed the wish that he might be interred in our metropolis and added:  “Wherever I am buried, I desire that there shall be room for my wife by my side.”  His wishes, too, are fulfilled.  He rests in the chief city of the American Republic, whose shores are washed by the waters of the Hudson, and in his magnificent mausoleum there is room for his wife by his side.