He was laid to rest in the cemetery of Picpus beside the wife who had awaited him there for more than a quarter of a century; but his grave was made in earth from an American battle-field that he had brought home with him after his last visit. Fifteen natives of Poland bore the coffin to the hearse. There were honorary pall-bearers representing the [Pg 291]Chamber of Deputies, the National Guard, the Army, the United States, Poland, and his own electoral district of Meaux. It was purely a military funeral. His party friends hotly declared that it was not a funeral at all, only a monster military parade. The government feared that his burial might be made the occasion for political demonstrations and ordered out such an immense number of troops that "the funeral car passed almost unseen in the midst of a battalion whose bayonets ... kept the people from rendering homage to their liberator." "He was there lifeless, but not without honor," wrote an indignant friend. "The French army surrounded him in his coffin as relentlessly as the Austrian army had held him a prisoner at Olmütz." Even the cemetery was guarded as if to withstand a siege. "Only the dead and his family might enter.... One would say that the government looked upon the mortal remains of this friend of liberty as a bit of prey which must not be allowed to escape." The liberals resented this fancied attitude of the government so bitterly that a cartoonist drew Louis Philippe rubbing his hands together with satisfaction as the procession passed and saying, gleefully, "Lafayette, you're caught, old man!" Only one incident occurred to justify so many precautions. In the Place Vendome a few score young men carrying a banner tried to break through the line of soldiers, but were repulsed. Elsewhere people looked on in silence. Lafayette's political friends complained that not one of the king's [Pg 292]ministers was to be seen in the procession. The ministers answered that politics were out of place at the funeral of such a distinguished man; and that the government rendered its homage regardless of party. While friends and foes wrangled thus over the coffin, Nature did her beautiful consoling best. Chateaubriand, standing in the silent crowd, saw the hearse stop a moment as it reached the top of a hill, and as it stopped a fugitive ray of sunlight came to rest upon it, then disappeared, gilding the guns and military trappings as it passed.