glorious representative of this nationality." The diplomatic corps gathered at the British embassy in Paris and decided to abstain from participating in the ceremony due to their antipathy to Napoleon as well as to Louis-Philippe. On 30 November Belle-Poule entered the roadstead of Cherbourg, and six days later the remains were transferred to the steamer la Normandie. Reaching Le Havre, and then on to Val-de-la-Haye, near Rouen, where the coffin was transferred to la Dorade 3 for carrying further up the Seine, on whose banks people had gathered to pay homage to Napoleon. On 14 December la Dorade 3 moored at Courbevoie in the northwest of Paris. Reburial The date for the reburial was set for 15 December. Victor Hugo evoked this day in his Les Rayons et les Ombres: "O frozen sky! and sunlight pure! shining bright in history!Funereal triumph, imperial torch!Let the people's memory hold you forever, Day beautiful as glory, Cold as the tomb Even as far as London, poems commemorating the event were published; one read in part: Ah! Luckless to the nations! Luckless day! When from Helena's rock they bore away, And gave again to France the mouldering bones Of him, beneath whose monarchy the thrones Of Earth's huge empires shook-that might one, The archon of the world-NAPOLEON! Despite the temperature never rising above 10 degrees Celsius, the crowd of spectators stretching from the Pont de Neuilly to the Invalides was huge. Some houses' rooftops were covered with people. Respect and curiosity won out over irritation, and the biting cold cooled all restlessness in the crowd. Under pale sunlight after snow, the plaster statues and gilded-card ornaments produced an ambiguous effect upon Hugo: "the niggardly clothing the grandiose". Hugo also wrote: The cortège arrived at the Invalides around 1:30, and at 2 pm it reached the gate of honour. The king and all France's leading statesmen were waiting in the royal chapel, the Église du Dôme. Joinville was to make a short speech, but nobody had remembered to forewarn him – he contented himself with a sabre salute and the king mumbled a few unintelligible words. Le Moniteur described the scene as best it could: General Atthalin stepped forward, bearing on a cushion the sword that Napoleon had worn at Austerlitz and Marengo, which he presented to Louis-Philippe. The king made a strange, recoiling movement, then turned to Bertrand and said: "General, I charge you