The Porte Saint-Denis was constructed in 1672 by the order and at the expense of the City of Paris, to celebrate the success of that astonishing campaign in which, during less than sixty days, forty strongholds and three provinces fell before the armies of the victorious monarch. The town side of the arch bears, on the left, a colossal figure of Holland, on the right, another of the Rhine: two masterpieces, due to the chisel of the Auguier Brothers. At the top of the arch is a frieze representing in low relief the famous passage of the Rhine under the orders of Louis XIV. On the Faubourg side the low relief at the top of the arch represents the taking of Maestricht. The Porte Saint-Denis bears this simple inscription: "_Ludovico Magno_"--"To Louis the Great." At the end of the Rue Faubourg Saint-Denis is the necropolis of Saint-Denis--the burial-place of the French kings. The obsequies of French kings have from the earliest times been attended with as much pomp and show as their coronations. It was not enough to embalm the body, place it in several coffins, and finally carry it to the royal burial place at Saint-Denis--to observe an elaborate ceremonial, which the Court functionaries and the officials of State followed out to the minutest detail; the effigy of the dead king was exposed for forty days in the palace, stretched on a State bed, clothed in royal garments, the crown on the head, the sceptre in the right hand, and the brand of justice on the left, with a crucifix, a vessel of holy water, and two golden censers at the foot of the couch. The officers of the palace, meanwhile, continued their duties as usual, and even went so far as to serve the king's meals as though he were still living. The embalmed body was afterwards transported to the Abbey of Saint-Denis, with the innumerable formalities laid down beforehand; while at the interment so many honours were paid to it that to enumerate them would be to fill a small volume. The details of the ceremony were so minute and fastidious that battles of etiquette constantly took place among the exalted persons figuring in the assembly.