It did not seem possible that the Parisians would feel so little interest as to who their new President might be that they would remain quietly in Paris while he was being elected on its outskirts. I expected to see them trooping out along the seven-mile road to Versailles in as great numbers as when they went there once before to bring a Queen back to Paris. But when we drove into Versailles the coach rattled through empty streets. There were no processions of cheering men in white hats tramping to the music of "Marching through Georgia." No red, white, and blue umbrellas, no sky-rocket yells, no dangling badges with gold fringe, nothing that makes a Presidential convention in Chicago the sight of a lifetime. No one was shouting the name of his political club or his political favorite; no one had his handkerchief tucked inside his collar and a palm leaf in his hand; there were no brass-bands, no banners, and not even beer. Nor was there any of the excitement which surrounds the election of even a Parliamentary candidate in England. I saw no long line of sandwich-men tramping in each gutter, no violent Radicals hustling equally elated Conservatives, and crying, "Good old Smith!" or "Good old Brown!" no women with primrose badges stuck to their persons making speeches or soliciting votes from the back of dog-carts. And nobody was engaged in throwing kippered herring or blacking the eyes of anybody else. Versailles was as unmoved as the statues in her public squares. Her broad, hospitable streets lay cool and quiet in the reflection of her yellow house-fronts, and under the heavy shadows of the double rows of elms the round, flat cobble-stones, unsoiled by hurrying footsteps, were as clean and regular as a pan of biscuit ready for the oven.