The Second Funeral of Napoleon
Page: 37

avenue of statues leading up to the Invalides. All these were
statues of warriors from Ney to Charlemagne, modelled in clay for
the nonce, and placed here to meet the corpse of the greatest
warrior of all. Passing these, we had to walk to a little door at
the back of the Invalides, where was a crowd of persons plunged in
the deepest mourning, and pushing for places in the chapel within.

The chapel is spacious and of no great architectural pretensions,
but was on this occasion gorgeously decorated in honor of the great
person to whose body it was about to give shelter.

We had arrived at nine; the ceremony was not to begin, they said,
till two: we had five hours before us to see all that from our
places could be seen.

We saw that the roof, up to the first lines of architecture, was
hung with violet; beyond this with black. We saw N's, eagles, bees,
laurel wreaths, and other such imperial emblems, adorning every nook
and corner of the edifice. Between the arches, on each side of the
aisle, were painted trophies, on which were written the names of
some of Napoleon's Generals and of their principal deeds of arms--
and not their deeds of arms alone, pardi, but their coats of arms
too. O stars and garters! but this is too much. What was Ney's
paternal coat, prithee, or honest Junot's quarterings, or the
venerable escutcheon of King Joachim's father, the innkeeper?

You and I, dear Miss Smith, know the exact value of heraldic
bearings. We know that though the greatest pleasure of all is to
ACT like a gentleman, it is a pleasure, nay a merit, to BE one--to
come of an old stock, to have an honorable pedigree, to be able to
say that centuries back our fathers had gentle blood, and to us
transmitted the same. There IS a good in gentility: the man who
questions it is envious, or a coarse dullard not able to perceive
the difference between high breeding and low. One has in the same
way heard a man brag that he did not know the difference between
wines, not he--give him a good glass of port, and he would pitch all
your claret to the deuce. My love, men often brag about their own
dulness in this way.