Madame de Villette, to whom Voltaire had been a second father, in all the splendour of her beauty, and the pathos of her tears, advanced and placed the noblest of all his wreaths, the wreath of filial affection, on the head of the great philosopher.
At this moment the crowd burst into one of the hymns of the poet Chenier, who, up to his death, most of all men cherished the memory of Voltaire.

Madame de Villette and the young girls of the amphitheatre descended into the street, now strewed with flowers, and walked before the car.

The Theatre Francais, then situated in the Faubourg St.
Germain, had erected a triumphal arch on its peristyle.

On each pillar a medallion was fixed, bearing in letters of gilt bronze the title of the principal dramas of the poet; on the pedestal of the statue erected before the door of the theatre was written, "_He wrote Irene at eighty-three years; at seventeen he wrote OEdipus_." The immense procession did not arrive at the Pantheon until ten o'clock at night, for the day had not been sufficiently long for this triumph.
The coffin of Voltaire was deposited between those of Descartes and Mirabeau,--the spot predestined for this intermediary genius between philosophy and policy, between the design and the execution.

This apotheosis of modern philosophy, amidst the great events that agitated the public mind, was a convincing proof that the Revolution comprehended its own aim, and that it sought to be the inauguration of those two principles represented by these cold ashes--Intelligence and Liberty.