the site that he had chosen for the vault of his dynasty. He
directed the construction of a grand monument dedicated to
Charlemagne, which was to rise in the "imperialized" church. The
great Carlovingian emperor was to have been represented, erect,
upon a column of marble, at the back of which statues in stone of
the emperors who succeeded him were to have been placed. But at
the time of Napoleon's fall, the monument had not been finished.
There had been completed only the statues, which have taken their
rank in the crypt. They represent Charlemagne, Louis le
Debonnaire, Charles le Chauve, Louis le Begue, Charles le Gros,
and even Louis d'Outremer, who, nevertheless, was only a king.

Like the Pharaohs of whom Bossuet speaks, Napoleon was not to
enjoy his sepulture. To be interred with pomp at Saint-Denis,
while Napoleon, at Saint Helena, rested under a simple stone on
which not even his name was inscribed, was the last triumph for
Louis XVIII.,--a triumph in death. The re-entrance of Louis XVIII.
had been not only the restoration of the throne, but that of the
tombs. The 21st of January, 1815, twenty-two years, to the very
day, after the death of Louis XVI., the remains of the unhappy
King and those of his Queen, Marie Antoinette, were transferred to
the Church of Saint-Denis, where their solemn obsequies were
celebrated. Chateaubriand cried:--

"What hand has reconstructed the roof of these vaults and prepared
these empty tombs? The hand of him who was seated on the throne of
the Bourbons. O Providence! He believed that he was preparing the
sepulchres of his race, and he was but building the tomb of Louis
XVI. Injustice reigns but for a moment; it is virtue only that can
count its ancestors and leave a posterity. See, at the same