Early on the morning of the 15th December, amidst clouds of incense, and thunder of cannon, and innumerable shouts of people, the coffin was transferred from the barge, and carried by the seamen of the “Belle Poule” to the Imperial Car.

And, now having conducted our hero almost to the gates of Paris, I must tell you what preparations were made in the capital to receive him.

Ten days before the arrival of the body, as you walked across the Deputies’ Bridge, or over the Esplanade of the Invalides, you saw on the bridge eight, on the esplanade thirty-two, mysterious boxes erected, wherein a couple of score of sculptors were at work night and day.

In the middle of the Invalid Avenue, there used to stand, on a kind of shabby fountain or pump, a bust of Lafayette, crowned with some dirty wreaths of “immortals,” and looking down at the little streamlet which occasionally dribbled below him.  The spot of ground was now clear, and Lafayette and the pump had been consigned to some cellar, to make way for the mighty procession that was to pass over the place of their habitation.

Strange coincidence!  If I had been Mr. Victor Hugo, my dear, or a poet of any note, I would, in a few hours, have made an impromptu concerning that Lafayette-crowned pump, and compared its lot now to the fortune of its patron some fifty years back.  From him then issued, as from his fountain now, a feeble dribble of pure words; then, as now, some faint circles of disciples were willing to admire him.  Certainly in the midst of the war and storm without, this pure fount of eloquence went dribbling, dribbling on, till of a sudden the revolutionary workmen knocked down statue and fountain, and the gorgeous imperial cavalcade trampled over the spot where they stood.

As for the Champs Elysees, there was no end to the preparations; the first day you saw a couple of hundred scaffoldings erected at intervals between the handsome gilded gas-lamps that at present ornament that avenue; next day, all these scaffoldings were filled with brick and mortar.  Presently, over the bricks and mortar rose pediments of statues, legs of urns, legs of goddesses, legs and bodies of goddesses, legs, bodies, and busts of goddesses.  Finally, on the 13th December, goddesses complete.  On the 14th they were painted marble-color; and the basements of wood and canvas on which they stood were made to resemble the same costly material.  The funereal urns were ready to receive the frankincense and precious odors which were to burn in them.  A vast number of white columns stretched down the avenue, each bearing a bronze buckler on which was written, in gold letters, one of the victories of the Emperor, and each decorated with enormous imperial flags.  On these columns golden eagles were placed; and the newspapers did not fail to remark the ingenious position in which the royal birds had been set:  for while those on the right-hand side of the way had their heads turned towards the procession, as if to watch its coming, those on the left were looking exactly the other way, as if to regard its progress.  Do not fancy I am joking:  this point was gravely and emphatically urged in many newspapers; and I do believe no mortal Frenchman ever thought it anything but sublime.