Just as the Luxemburg affair was concluded, all the world went to Paris to attend the Exposition, which was intended to be, and seemed, a symbol of the permanence of the Second Empire. The projectors knew that the immense preparations would enable the government to employ many workmen, who might otherwise be unruly, and that the vast concourse of visitors would bring money to the tradespeople and keep them from grumbling. The ostensible purpose, however, was to dazzle both Frenchmen and strangers by a view of Imperial magnificence; and it was fully achieved. Paris herself, the Phryne among cities, astonished those who had never seen her, or who had seen her in old days. Where, they asked, were the narrow, crooked streets, in which barricaders once fortified themselves? Were these boulevards, stretching broad and straight,--were these they? And by what magic had the old, irregular dwellings been transformed into miles of tall, stately blocks? New churches, new quays, new parks, new palaces, bearing the impress of grace, symmetry, and a unifying planner, excited the wonder of the cosmopolitan throng of visitors. But the products of industry, the triumphs of the arts of peace, were not allowed to obscure the military glories of the Second Empire. A “Bridge of the Alma” and a “Boulevard of Sebastopol” kept the Crimean prowess in memory; a “Solferino Bridge” and a “Magenta Boulevard” bore witness to the Italian triumphs. And there were pageants, military, courtly, artistic; balls, at which, among the picked beauties of the world, the Empress Eugénie shone most beautiful; banquets, at which Napoleon sat at the head of the table, with monarchs at his right hand and his left deferentially listening. Little did the on-lookers suppose that the master of those magnificent revels had been lately frustrated by M. de Bismarck, who was merely one of the million whose presence in Paris seemed a tribute to Napoleon’s supremacy. History, it is said, never repeats: but is the saying true? Is there not an old, old story of Belshazzar and the magnificent feast he gave in ancient Babylon, and the mysterious writing on the wall? And was not another Belshazzar repeating the episode in this modern Babylon less than thirty years ago? However that may be, the Exhibition of 1867 was the last triumph of Imperial France.