The details of this ceremony were magnificent; and in spite of its profane and theatrical trappings, the features of every man that followed the car wore the expression of joy, arising from an intellectual triumph.  A large body of cavalry, who seemed to have now offered their arms at the shrine of intelligence, opened the march.  Then followed the muffled drums, to whose notes were added the roar of the artillery that formed a part of the cortege.  The scholars of the colleges of Paris, the patriotic societies, the battalions of the national guard, the workmen of the different public journals, the persons employed to demolish the foundations of the Bastille, some bearing a portable press, which struck off different inscriptions in honour of Voltaire, as the procession moved on; others carrying the chains, the collars and bolts, and bullets found in the dungeons and arsenals of the state prisons; and lastly, busts of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Mirabeau, marched between the troops and the populace.  On a litter was displayed the proces-verbal of the electors of ’89, that Hegyra of the insurrection.  On another stand, the citizens of the Faubourg Saint Antoine exhibited a plan in relief of the Bastille, the flag of the donjon, and a young girl, in the costume of an Amazon, who had fought at the siege of this fortress.  Here and there, pikes surmounted with the Phrygian cap of liberty arose above the crowd, and on one of them was a scroll bearing the inscription, “From this steel sprung Liberty!”

All the actors and actresses of the theatres of Paris followed the statue of him who for sixty years had inspired them; the titles of his principal works were inscribed on the sides of a pyramid that represented his immortality.  His statue, formed of gold and crowned with laurel, was borne on the shoulders of citizens, wearing the costumes of the nations and the times whose manners and customs he had depicted; and the seventy volumes of his works were contained in a casket, also of gold.  The members of the learned bodies, and of the principal academies of the kingdom surrounded this ark of philosophy.  Numerous bands of music, some marching with the troops, others stationed along the road of the procession, saluted the car as it passed with loud bursts of harmony, and filled the air with the enthusiastic strains of liberty.  The procession stopped before the principal theatres, a hymn was sung in honour of his genius, and the car then resumed its march.  On their arrival at the quai that bears his name, the car stopped before the house of M. de Villette, where Voltaire had breathed his last, and where his heart was preserved.  Evergreen shrubs, garlands of leaves, and wreaths of roses decorated the front of the house, which bore the inscription, “His fame is every where, and his heart is here.”  Young girls dressed in white, and wreaths of flowers on their heads, covered the steps of an amphitheatre erected before the house.  Madame de Villette, to whom Voltaire had been a second father, in all the splendour of her beauty, and the pathos of her tears, advanced and placed the noblest of all his wreaths, the wreath of filial affection, on the head of the great philosopher.