The coffin, having been landed, was placed upon a catafalque, the cannon gave the signal to begin the march, and the procession started. The public was given to understand that in a sort of funeral casket blazing with gold and purple, on the top of the catafalque, twenty feet from the ground, was enclosed the coffin of the Emperor; but it was not so. The sailors of the "Belle Poule" protested that the catafalque was too frail, and the height too great. They dared not, they said, attempt to get the lead-lined coffin up to the place assigned for it, still less try to get it down again. It was consequently deposited, for fear of accident, on a low platform between the wheels. First came the gendarmes, or mounted police, with glittering brazen breastplates, waving horse-hair crests, fine horses, and a band of trumpeters; then the mounted Garde Municipale; then Lancers; then the Lieutenant-General commanding the National Guard of Paris, surrounded by his staff, and all officers, of whatever grade, then on leave in the capital. These were followed by infantry, cavalry, sappers and miners, Lancers, and Cuirassiers, staff-officers, etc., with bands and banners. Then came a carriage containing the chaplain who had had charge of the body from the time it left St. Helena, following whom were a crowd of military and naval officers. Next appeared a led charger, son of a stallion ridden by Napoleon, and soon after came a bevy of the marshals of France. Then all the banners of the eighty-six departments, and at last the funeral catafalque. As it passed under the Arch of Triumph, erected by Napoleon in commemoration of his victories, there were hundreds in the crowd who expected to see the Emperor come to life again. Strange to say, the universal cry was "Vive l'empereur!" One heard nowhere "Vive le roi!" The funeral car was hung with purple gauze embroidered with golden bees. As I said, the coffin of the Emperor was suffered to repose upon a gilded buckler supported by four golden caryatides; but it was, as the sailors would have said, "stowed safely in the hold."