“If this business had fallen in the month of June or July, with all its excitements, spontaneous and elaborate, I should have deemed a sanguinary struggle between the government and the mob certain or highly probable. The present military array might answer for an approaching army of Cossacks. Forty or fifty thousand troops remain in the barracks within and camps without, besides the regular soldiery and National Guards in the field, ready to act against the domestic enemy. “_Providentially_ the cold increased to the utmost keenness; the genial currents of the insurrectionary and revolutionary soul were frozen.” The climax of the pageant was in the temple of the Invalides. The spacious church was draped in the most magnificent and lavish fashion, and adorned with a perfect bewilderment of imperial emblems. The light was shut out by hangings of violet velvet; tripods blazing with colored flames, and thousands upon thousands of waxen candles in brilliant candelabra lighted the temple. Under the dome, in the place of the altar, stood the catafalque which was to receive the coffin. [Illustration: THE FUNERAL MASS IN THE CHURCH OF THE HOTEL DES INVALIDES. THE CATAFALQUE ON WHICH THE COFFIN RESTS IS SEEN IN THE DISTANCE.] From early in the morning the galleries, choir, and tribunes of the Invalides were packed by a distinguished company. There were the Deputies and Senators—neither of which had been represented in the _cortége_—the judicial and educational bodies, the officers of army and navy, the ambassadors and representatives of foreign governments, the king, and the court. But none of these dignitaries were of more than passing interest that day. The centre of attention, until the coffin entered, was the few old soldiers of the Empire to be seen in the company; most prominent of these was Marshal Moncey, the decrepit governor of the Invalides. It was two o’clock in the afternoon when the Archbishop of Paris, preceded by a splendid cross-bearer, and followed by sixteen incense boys and long rows of white-clad priests, left the church to meet the procession. They returned soon. Following them were the Prince de Joinville and a select few from the grand _cortége_ without, attending Napoleon’s coffin. As it passed, the great assemblage was swayed by an extraordinary emotion. There is no one of those who have described the day who does not speak of the sudden, intense agitation which thrilled the company, whether he refers to it half-humorously as Thackeray, who told how “everybody’s heart was thumping as hard as possible,” or cries with Victor Hugo: “Sire: En ce moment-là, vouz aurez pour royaume. Tous les fronts, tous les cœurs qui battront sous le ciel, Les nations feront asseoir votre fantôme, Au trone universel.”