All along the Champs Elysees were urns of plaster-of-Paris destined to contain funeral incense and flames; columns decorated with huge flags of blue, red, and white, embroidered with shining crowns, eagles, and N's in gilt paper, and statues of plaster representing Nymphs, Triumphs, Victories, or other female personages, painted in oil so as to represent marble. Real marble could have had no better effect, and the appearance of the whole was lively and picturesque in the extreme. On each pillar was a buckler, of the color of bronze, bearing the name and date of a battle in gilt letters: you had to walk through a mile-long avenue of these glorious reminiscences, telling of spots where, in the great imperial days, throats had been victoriously cut. As we passed down the avenue, several troops of soldiers met us: the garde-muncipale a cheval, in brass helmets and shining jack-boots, noble-looking men, large, on large horses, the pick of the old army, as I have heard, and armed for the special occupation of peace-keeping: not the most glorious, but the best part of the soldier's duty, as I fancy. Then came a regiment of Carabineers, one of Infantry--little, alert, brown-faced, good-humored men, their band at their head playing sounding marches. These were followed by a regiment or detachment of the Municipals on foot--two or three inches taller than the men of the Line, and conspicuous for their neatness and discipline. By-and-by came a squadron or so of dragoons of the National Guards: they are covered with straps, buckles, aguillettes, and cartouche-boxes, and make under their tricolor cock's-plumes a show sufficiently warlike. The point which chiefly struck me on beholding these military men of the National Guard and the Line, was the admirable manner in which they bore a cold that seemed to me as sharp as the weather in the Russian retreat, through which cold the troops were trotting without trembling and in the utmost cheerfulness and good-humor. An aide-de-camp galloped past in white pantaloons. By heavens! it made me shudder to look at him. With this profound reflection, we turned away to the right towards the hanging-bridge (where we met a detachment of young men of the Ecole de l'Etat Major, fine-looking lads, but sadly disfigured by the wearing of stays or belts, that make the waists of the French dandies of a most absurd tenuity), and speedily passed into the avenue of statues leading up to the Invalides. All these were statues of warriors from Ney to Charlemagne, modelled in clay for the nonce, and placed here to meet the corpse of the greatest warrior of all. Passing these, we had to walk to a little door at the back of the Invalides, where was a crowd of persons plunged in the deepest mourning, and pushing for places in the chapel within. The chapel is spacious and of no great architectural pretensions, but was on this occasion gorgeously decorated in honor of the great person to whose body it was about to give shelter.