It is also true that those Parisians who could decently make a little money out of the nation's loss went about doing so with an avidity that showed a thrifty mind. Almost every one who had windows or balconies facing the line of the funeral procession offered them for rent, and advertised them vigorously by placards and through the papers; venders of knots of crêpe and emblems of mourning filled the streets with their cries. Portraits of Carnot in heavy black were hawked about by the same men who weeks before had sold ridiculous figures of him taking off his hat and bowing to an imaginary audience; the great shops removed their summer costumes from the windows and put stacks of flags bound with crêpe in their place; the flower-shops lined the sidewalks with specimens of their work in mourning-wreaths; and the papers, after their first expression of grief, proceeded to actively discuss Carnot's successor, quoting the popularity of different candidates by giving the betting odds for and against them, as they had done the week before, when the horses were entered for the Grand Prix. This was three days after Carnot's death, and while he was still lying unburied at the Élysée. The French constitution provides that in such an event as that of 1893 the National Assembly shall be convened immediately to select a new President. According to this the President of the Senate, in his capacity as President of the National Assembly, decided that the two Chambers should convene for that purpose at Versailles on Wednesday, June 27th, at one o'clock. This certainly seemed to promise a scene of unusual activity, and perhaps historical importance. I knew what the election of a President meant to us at home, and I argued that if the less excitable Americans could work themselves up into such a state of frenzy that they blocked the traffic of every great city, and reddened the sky with bonfires from Boston to San Francisco, the Frenchman's ecstasy of excitement would be a spectacle of momentous interest. This seemed to be all the more probable because to the American an election means a new Executive but for the next four years, while to the Frenchman the new state of affairs that threatened him would extend for seven. Young Howlett had a vacant place on the top of his public coach, and was just turning the corner as I came out of the hotel; so I went out with him, and looked anxiously down on each side to see the hurrying crowds pushing forward to the palace in the suburbs; and when I found that all roads did not lead to Versailles that day, I decided that it must be because we were on the wrong one, which would eventually lead us somewhere else. [Illustration: PORTRAITS OF CARNOT IN HEAVY BLACK]