After such an exhibition as this it was only natural that the people should turn from the soldiers to find the greater interest in the miles of wreaths that came from every corner of France. These were the expressions of the truer sympathy with the dead President, and there seemed to be more sentiment and real regret in the little black bead wreaths from the villages in the south and west of France than there were in all the great wreaths of orchids and violets purchased on the boulevards.
The procession had been two hours in passing a given point. It had moved at ten o'clock, and it was four in the afternoon before it dispersed at the Panthéon, and Deputies in evening dress and attachés in uniform and judges in scarlet robes could be seen hurrying over Paris in fiacres, faint and hot and cross, for the first taste of food and drink that had touched their lips since early morning. A few hours later there was not a soldier out of his barracks, the scaffoldings had been taken to pieces, the spectators had been distributed in trains to the environs, the bands played again in the gardens, and the theatres opened their doors. Paris had taken off her mourning, and fallen back into her interrupted routine of pleasure, and had left nothing in the streets to show that Carnot's body had passed over them save thousands of scraps of greasy newspapers in which the sympathetic spectators of the solemn function had wrapped their breakfasts.
I think the most satisfying thing about the race for the Grand Prix at Longchamps is the knowledge that every one in Paris is justifying your interest in the event by being just as much excited about it as you are. You have the satisfaction of feeling that you are with the crowd, or that the crowd is with you, as you choose to put it, and that you move in sympathy with hundreds of thousands of people, who, though they may not be at the race-track in person, wish they were, which is the next best thing, and which helps you in the form of moral support, at least. You feel that every one who passes by knows and approves of your idea of a holiday, and will quite understand when you ride out on the Champs Élysées at eleven o'clock in the morning with four other men packed in one fiacre, or when, for no apparent reason, you hurl your hat into the air.