Note 75 — Chapter XVII

Though the new northern station, erected on the site of the old, had been virtually finished for more than a twelvemonth, the approaches to it were, if not altogether magnificent projects, little more than magnificent mazes, stone and mortar Phœnixes, in the act of rising, not risen, from Brobdignagian dust-heaps, and altogether unfit for any kind of spectacular procession. Consequently, it had been decided to connect the northern with the eastern line immediately after entering the fortifications. The Strasbourg Station did not labour under the same disadvantages; the boulevard of that name stretched uninterruptedly as far as the Boulevard St. Denis, although, as yet, there were few houses on it. I have seen a good many displays of bunting in my time; I have seen Turin and Florence and Rome beflagged and decorated on the occasions of popular rejoicings; I have seen historical processions in the university towns of Utrecht and Leyden; I have seen triumphal entries in Brussels; I was in London on Thanksgiving day, but I have never beheld anything to compare with the wedged masses of people along the whole of the route, as far as the Bois de Boulogne, on that Saturday afternoon. The whole of the suburban population had, as it were, flocked into Paris. The regulars lined one side of the whole length of the Boulevards, the National Guards the other. And there was not a single house from the station to the southernmost corner of the Rue Royale that had not its emblems, its trophies, its inscriptions of "welcome." With that inborn taste which distinguishes the Parisians, the decorator had ceased trying to gild the gold and to paint the lily at that point, and had left the magnificent perspective to produce its own effect—a few Venetian masts along the Avenue de Champs-Élysées and nothing more. Among the notable features of the decorations in the main artery of Paris was the magnificent triumphal arch, erected by the management of the Opéra between the Rue de Richelieu and what is now the Rue Drouot. It rose to the fourth stories of the adjacent houses, and looked, not a temporary structure, but a monument intended to stand the wear and tear of ages. No description could convey an idea of its grandeur. The inside was draped throughout with bee-bespangled purple, the top was decorated with immense eagles, seemingly in full flight, and holding between their talons proportionately large scutcheons, bearing the interlaced monograms of the Imperial hosts and the Royal guests. In front of the Passage de l'Opéra stood an allegorical statue, on a very beautiful pedestal draped with flags; and further on, at the back of the Opéra-Comique, which really should have been its front,[75] an obelisk, the base of which was a correct representation, in miniature, of the Palais de l'Industrie (the then Exhibition Building). By the Madeleine a battalion of the National Guards had erected, at their own cost, two more allegorical statues, France and England. A deputation from the National Guards had also presented her Majesty with a magnificent bouquet on alighting from the train.