While the press and government, the clubs and _cafés_, discussed the political side of the question, the populace quietly revived the Napoleon legend. Within two days after the government had announced its intentions, commerce had begun to take advantage of the financial possibilities in the approaching ceremony. New editions of the “Lives” of Napoleon which Vernet and Raffet had illustrated, were advertised. Dumas’ “Life” and Thiers’ “Consulate and Empire” were announced. Memoirs of the period, like those of the Duchesse d’Abrantès and of Marmont, were revived. As on the announcement of Napoleon’s death in 1821, there was an inundation of pamphlets in verse and prose; of portraits and war compositions, lithographs, engravings, and wood-cuts; of thousands of little objects such as the French know so well how to make. The shops and street carts were heaped with every conceivable article _à la Napoléon_. The legend grew as the people gazed. On July 7th the “Belle Poule,” the vessel which was to conduct the Prince de Joinville, the commander of the expedition, to St. Helena, sailed from Toulon accompanied by the “Favorite.” In the suite of the Prince were several old friends of Napoleon: the Baron las Cases, General Gourgaud, Count Bertrand, and four of his former servants. All these persons had been with him at St. Helena. The Prince de Joinville had not received his orders to go on the expedition with great pleasure. Two of his brothers had just been sent to Africa to fight, and he envied them their opportunities for adventures and glory; and, besides, he was sick of a most plebeian complaint, the measles. “One day as I lay in high fever,” he says in his “Memoirs,” “I saw my father appear, followed by Monsieur de Rémusat, then Minister of the Interior. This unusual visit filled me with astonishment, and my surprise increased when my father said, ‘Joinville, you are to go out to St. Helena and bring back Napoleon’s coffin.’ If I had not been in bed already I should have fallen down flat, and at first blush I felt no wise flattered when I compared the warlike campaign my brothers were on with the undertaker’s job I was being sent to perform in the other hemisphere. But I served my country, and I had no right to discuss my orders.” If the young prince was privately a little ashamed of his task, publicly he adapted himself admirably to the occasion. [Illustration: NAPOLEON’S TOMB AT ST. HELENA. From a recent photograph.] A voyage of sixty-six days brought the “Belle Poule,” on October 8th, to St. Helena, where she was welcomed by the English with every honor. Indeed, throughout the affair the attitude of the English was dignified and generous. They showed plainly their desire to satisfy and flatter the pride and sentiment of the French.