“Both,” said Master Lewis.
“The Tuileries and the Louvre are now one. Francis I. began the building of the Louvre in 1541; Catharine de Medici commenced the Tuileries in 1564; Napoleon III. united the two palaces in the four years following 1852. The two palaces have been growing about three hundred years. The Tuileries was partly burned by the Commune. The united palaces cover twenty-four acres. Think of it! Twenty-four acres of art, ornament, pictures, and splendor!”
The garden of the Tuileries is the favorite promenade of wealthy and fashionable Parisians, and seemed to the boys too beautiful for reality. Graceful statues rise on every hand from flower-beds, bowers, by cool fountains, and in the shade of grand old trees,—statues in marble, stone, and bronze; Grecian, Roman, French. Airy terraces, basins bordered with rich foliage and gorgeous flowers carry the eye hither and thither, and call out some new expression of admiration at almost every step.
“How happy the life of a French king must have been!” said Tommy Toby.
“How unhappy the lives of French kings have been!” said Master Lewis. “If you would have a view of royalty that makes a peasant’s life seem desirable, read the history of the old French kings.”
The beautiful forests of France extend to the very outskirts of the city. One of these, the Bois de Boulogne, is the favorite park of Paris. It contains more than two thousand acres. It has an immense aquarium, pavilions of birds, and a garden for ostriches and cassowaries, and its principal avenue is one hundred yards wide.
The Class visited this park on a beautiful afternoon, passing through the Champs Elysées, a splendid avenue filled with equipages. In this walk the boys saw the famous Arc de Triomphe and the Palais de l’Industrie, in which the World’s Fair was held in 1855, when nearly two million strangers beheld Paris in her glory. The Arc de Triomphe was begun in 1806, the year of the battle of Austerlitz, and was finished by Louis Philippe. It commemorates the victories of Napoleon, and is the most magnificent imperial monument in the world.
No scene in Paris seemed to inspire a part of the Class with so much awe as the tomb of Napoleon. At the entrance to the crypt of the dome of the church of the Invalides, containing the conqueror’s remains, are these words: “I desire that my ashes may rest on the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the French people whom I have loved so well.”
From a balustrade above the tomb under the beautiful dome the boys looked down in silence on the sarcophagus, or stone coffin, which is of Finland granite. The monolith on which it rests is porphyry, and weighs 130,000 pounds. The monument cost nine million francs.
A beautifully tinted light fell upon the sarcophagus.