for by many reasons both political and social.  Any time these eight hundred years this ill-will has been going on, and has been transmitted on the French side from father to son.  On the French side, not on ours:  we have had no, or few, defeats to complain of, no invasions to make us angry; but you see that to discuss such a period of time would demand a considerable number of pages, and for the present we will avoid the examination of the question.

But they hate us, that is the long and short of it; and you see how this hatred has exploded just now, not upon a serious cause of difference, but upon an argument:  for what is the Pasha of Egypt to us or them but a mere abstract opinion?  For the same reason the Little-endians in Lilliput abhorred the Big-endians; and I beg you to remark how his Royal Highness Prince Ferdinand Mary, upon hearing that this argument was in the course of debate between us, straightway flung his furniture overboard and expressed a preference for sinking his ship rather than yielding it to the etranger.  Nothing came of this wish of his, to be sure; but the intention is everything.  Unlucky circumstances denied him the power, but he had the will.

Well, beyond this disappointment, the Prince de Joinville had nothing to complain of during the voyage, which terminated happily by the arrival of the “Belle Poule” at Cherbourg, on the 30th of November, at five o’clock in the morning.  A telegraph made the glad news known at Paris, where the Minister of the Interior, Tanneguy-Duchatel (you will read the name, Madam, in the old Anglo-French wars), had already made “immense preparations” for receiving the body of Napoleon.

The entry was fixed for the 15th of December.

On the 8th of December at Cherbourg the body was transferred from the “Belle Poule” frigate to the “Normandie” steamer.  On which occasion the mayor of Cherbourg deposited, in the name of his town, a gold laurel branch upon the coffin—­which was saluted by the forts and dykes of the place with one thousand guns!  There was a treat for the inhabitants.

There was on board the steamer a splendid receptacle for the coffin:  “a temple with twelve pillars and a dome to cover it from the wet and moisture, surrounded with velvet hangings and silver fringes.  At the head was a gold cross, at the foot a gold lamp:  other lamps were kept constantly burning within, and vases of burning incense were hung around.  An altar, hung with velvet and silver, was at the mizzen-mast of the vessel, and four silver eagles at each corner of the altar.”  It was a compliment at once to Napoleon and—­excuse me for saying so, but so the facts are—­to Napoleon and to God Almighty.

Three steamers, the “Normandie,” the “Veloce,” and the “Courrier,” formed the expedition from Cherbourg to Havre, at which place they arrived on the evening of the 9th of December, and where the “Veloce” was replaced by the Seine steamer, having in tow one of the state-coasters, which was to fire the salute at the moment when the body was transferred into one of the vessels belonging to the Seine.