The Second Funeral of Napoleon
Page: 21

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