x outside
seats which had been reserved for the Harris party were filled. The
coachman drove down the Avenue de l'Opera and into the Place du
Carrousel, stopping a moment that all might admire the artistic pavilions
of the Louvre, and the statue to the memory of Leon Gambetta, "Father of
the Republic." Thence they rode out of the Court of the Tuileries, across
the Place de la Concord, and down the charming Champs Elysees. On the
left stands the Palais de l'Industrie, where the salon or annual
exhibition of modern paintings and sculptures occurs in May and June. On
the right is the Palais de l'Elysee, the official residence of the French
president.

George recalled that in these gardens of Paris, in 1814, Emperors
Alexander and Francis, King Frederick III., and others sang a _Te Deum_,
in thanksgiving for their great victory over Napoleon I.; that here
the English, Prussian, and Russian troops bivouacked, and that in the
spring of 1871, Emperor William and his brilliant staff led the German
troops beneath the Arc de Triomphe, while the German bands played "Die
Wacht am Rhine."

The coach passed through the Bois de Boulogne, in sight of lovely lakes,
quaint old windmills, and across famous Longchamps, where after the
Franco-German War under a bright sky, in the presence of the French
president, his cabinet, the senate and chamber of deputies, in full
dress, and a million of enthusiastic citizens, Grevy and Gambetta
presented several hundred silk banners to the French army. Thence the
drive was along the left bank of the river till the ruins of St. Cloud
were reached, where Napoleon III. Unwittingly signed his abdication when
he declared war against Prussia.

Climbing the hills through fine old forests after fourteen miles of
travel southwest of Paris, the coach reached Versailles. Here that
magnificent monarch, Louis XIV. lavished hundreds of millions on
palaces, parks, fountains, and statues, and here the Harrises studied the
brilliant pictorial history of France. In the Grand Gallery, which
commands beautiful views of garden and water, are effective paintings
in the ceiling, which represent the splendid achievements of Louis XIV.
In this same Hall of Glass, beneath Le Brun's color history of the defeat
of the Germans by the French, occurred in 1871 a bit of fine poetic
justice, when King William of Prussia, with the consent of the German
States, was saluted as Emperor of reunited Germany. After visiting the
Grand Tr