The Second Funeral of Napoleon
Page: 24

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