Ten days before the arrival of the body, as you walked across the
Deputies' Bridge, or over the Esplanade of the Invalides, you saw on
the bridge eight, on the esplanade thirty-two, mysterious boxes erected,
wherein a couple of score of sculptors were at work night and day.
In the middle of the Invalid Avenue, there used to stand, on a kind of
shabby fountain or pump, a bust of Lafayette, crowned with some dirty
wreaths of "immortals," and looking down at the little streamlet which
occasionally dribbled below him. The spot of ground was now clear, and
Lafayette and the pump had been consigned to some cellar, to make way
for the mighty procession that was to pass over the place of their
habitation.
Strange coincidence! If I had been Mr. Victor Hugo, my dear, or a poet
of any note, I would, in a few hours, have made an impromptu concerning
that Lafayette-crowned pump, and compared its lot now to the fortune
of its patron some fifty years back. From him then issued, as from his
fountain now, a feeble dribble of pure words; then, as now, some faint
circles of disciples were willing to admire him.
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