was designed by me, and carried out under my direction, I hold to it, and I forbid anybody to touch it,” he said.  “But, my good sir,” I replied, “my orders have been given, and will be carried out.”  My gentleman became so violent that I desired him to leave the vessel instantly.  “But surely you are not going to put me ashore at this hour (it was almost dark) in the open fields?  I don’t know where I am; I don’t see any houses.”  “That’s nothing to me, you have been insolent, so it is your own fault.  Put this gentleman ashore.”  Four sailors advanced, but he gave in, and nobody ever heard of him again.  By the following morning the transformation was complete, and the coffin moving unsheltered up the course of the river, as though to take possession of the stream, was much more striking than all the tinsel and canopies imaginable.  The whole voyage up to Courbevoie, the point of arrival, was a mere classic reproduction of the usual official journey—­flags, authorities girt with tricolour sashes, clergy pronouncing blessings, shaking with terror all the time, horses, gendarmes, curious crowds of holiday makers, the only thing lacking being the speeches.  From Courbevoie the body was taken in procession through the Champs Elysees to the Invalides, with the usual ceremonial, which I had already witnessed in the cases of Charles X. and the Duchesse d’Orleans, but with one extra point, the cold, and it was terrible.

At the Invalides four-and-twenty non-commissioned officers advanced to carry the coffin into the church; but in spite of the most desperate efforts the veterans could not succeed in lifting it, and I had to make my sailors carry it.  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 afterwards arranged in the Moniteur.  The Church of the Invalides was full to overflowing, the Chamber of Peers and the Chamber of Deputies being seated in the choir.  The success of the day fell to my brave sailors.  Everybody was curious to see them.  Their athletic forms, easy gait, and kindly sunburnt faces at once won over the general public, especially the feminine portion of it; and then they were something new to that sight-loving Parisian population, to whom so many have been given since then, that for want of a better the only thing offered them at the present moment is Dinah Salifou and the danse du ventre.  What a fall here too, compared vith the past!  During the triumphal passage of the Emperor’s ashes down the Champs Elysees between two ranks of