The Express.
London, England, 1864-12-22 00:00:00

EXPRESS FROM PARIS.

(fox on OWN conzspownwr.)
PARIS, WEDNESDAY Emma.

The evening Moniteur gives the following account
of the translation of the heart of Voltaire to the
Bibliothhque Imperiale, which event has provoked
commentaries of the most divers kinds :
When Voltaire died, his heart, after a post snorters ex-
amination, was extracted from his body on May 31, 1778,
by order of the Marquis &Ville/I*in wham house he stayed
after his cetera to Paris, sod wherein he died. The friend,
the admirer of the great writer, desired to ease this heart
from the destruction which death occasion' and'
it wasplated in a metallic vessel and steeped
in a alloollllll preparation calculated to preserve
it from delay. Whoa, in execution of the law
of May 30, 1791, which enacted that "the ashes of Voltaire
should be transferred to the church of Saint • Genevieve,
whore they should receive the funereal honours due to
peat mss," the funeral procession of Voltaire pained
through the streets of Paris on July 11 of the same year, a
halt was merle before the mansion of the Marquis de Villette,
situated at the comer of the Rue de Beaune and the Quai
Voltaire, and the Afseimur of July ti records the fact that
the reason for the pause was that Voltaire's heart was
them. Shortly afterwards the heart wee removed

to the Chateau de Valletta in the arrondissement of Poet
Saint Maumee (One), where it ever since remained, and
once kept with veneration. ' But the 'Marquis. de Villein*,
his widow, and his son are dead ; and their heirs having
considered it a dirty to give up this relic to the state, M.
Leon Duval, a membtrOf the order of Advocates of the
Imperial Coon of Paris, having taken the Emperor's plea-
sure, his Majesty desired that a national asylum should be
given in the Rebbothique Imperial' to the heart of Vol-
taire, to the end that it may henceforth belong to France,
pursuant to the titan of the law of May 30, 1791.
In obedience to hie Majesty's orders on Friday last, the
16th of this month, M.Durvey,the Minister of Public Instruc-
tion, proceeded to the Bibliothrque Imperials, and there,
in presences of the Administrator• General of the eetablish-
meet, accompanied by members of the Consultative Com-
mittee, be received from the hands of M. Leon Duval the
heart of Voltaire enclosed in a recipient of gilt metal, on
which is engraved these words :—" Le mot de Voltaire,
mort I Paris le XXX may MDCCLXXVIII." The minister
declared that be took possession of this precious deposit,
and ordered that it should be provisionally kept,
with all the respect due to the mortal remains of this great
man in the beat part of the Bibliotheque Imperials, that is
to say, the department of medals, until the time when the
new works shall be sufficiently advanced to permit of its
definitive installation between the departments of manu-
scripts and prints, on the first floor of the Rotunda, be-
tween the junction of the Ruse de Richelieu and Reny* dee
Petits Champs, where a room is destined to receive not only
the heart of Voltaire, but also the original fits-
, toe by lloadon, the medals struck in his honour, and the
manuscript correspondence and printed works of the im-
mortal writer.

Prods alba (i.e., a written record) wu it owe drawn
up of this delivery end reception.

I have here given you a document which will
assuredly till a page of history. In my opinion
" consternation " is not too strong a word to de-
scribe the feelings of the Papal party when they
shall see in the front page of the /itositeur of 1864,
this adoption and renewal of the apotheosis of Vol-
taire of 1791.

The Patric gives as positive news that M. Conti,
Councillor of State, will be appointed private
secretary to the Emperor. This is oonfirmed. Dr.
Connesu called on M. Conti, who never dreamed
of such an honour, to offer him the poet. M.
Conti is a Corsican—always, other things being
equal, a good title to imperial favour—and was
born at Ajaccio on October 31, 1812. He stu-
died law and poetry at the same time, and
when quite a young man was elected to the
' Council General io the opposition interest, Umpere
Louis Philippe. After the revolution of February,
lOU, he was made Procureur-General of the re-
public at Hestia. He was returned to the National
Assembly by 18,760 votes, and voted with the de-
mocratic party as long as General Cavaignac was
in power. After December 10 he rallied at once to
Louis Napoleon, and he was made a councillor of
state shortly after the coup (Mat.
The Rev. Father Hyacinthe, of the order of
barefooted Cartuelites,who is preaching the Advent
sermons at Notre-Dame, is said to have been
selected for the Lent services at the Tuileries.
This is one of the most rising preachers of the
day, and his manifest superiority to Father Felix,
of the order of the Jesuits, causes great chagrin
to that body. It is thought impossible that
Father Felix can be again engaged at Notre-
Dame.

The Bourse remains with scarcely any change,

A FRENCH VIEW OF PRESIDENT
LINCOLN'S RE-ELECTION.

A distinguished French writer, K Auguste Laugel,
contributes an article on Mr. Lincoln's re-election to
the number of the Revue des Deus Menedes of the 15th
December, of which the following are the concluding
passages. K Laugel, it may be mentioned, was
in America when the electoral contest took place :
The first words which fell from the lips of the President after
the reedention were words of penes and conciliation. General
Butler, in a speech which he made before leaving New
York, also gave it to be understood that pacific proposals
would soon be made to the Sinthern States. The misfortunes
cad the emotions of the war have not aroused any sentiment
of vengeance or of hatred in the hearts of the inhabitants of
the North ; they are ready to restore to the Southern
State" all their coastal:aloud rights, to cover everybody
with a generous amnesty, to madder all the decrees of
cooliscation • dead letter. They merely ask of the South
the 'enunciation of an institution henceforth considered
incompatible with the Union. Never since the commence-
ment of the war has the North felt itself so powerful, so
united, so confident; all doubt, all hesitation, has disap-
peared; the war has henceforth AN definitive meaning; all
the fortes of the nation have found • common object.
This unconscious purpose, pervading thousands of individual
minds, has at last become aware of it. own existence. As the
price of so much bloodshed, of so many Man. exertions, end
troubles, it asks one thing only, "the Union without
slavery." The popular verdict has already excited deep agita-
tion is the Coefederate ranks. Mr. Jefferson Davis and his
friends hoped that the democratic party would obtain the
victory ; they believed the North exhausted, discouraged,
divided, and even if Mr. Lincoln were elected they at least
expected that his majority would be too smell to assure his
moral authority. If a new civil war grew out of the exist-
iog civil war, if the factions armed against each other in the
towns and in the States of the North, if party spirit
penetrated even the ranks of the army, the rebellion re-
gained in a moment all it had lost. A single day has anni-
hilated these vain hopes; the Southern Coofederacy
stands face to face with the gloomy reality ; it sees it, army
decimated, half its original territory lost for ever, its last
remaining cities threatened, it. treasury empty, its
credit exhausted. No free voice can make itself
heard in those States subjected to the military government ;
but the accounts of prisoners and refugees, the tone of the
few Southern jounals in which regret and weariness may be
discerned under an amaraaoe of enforced enthusiasm, the
speeches recently delivered in Georgia by Mr. Jefferson Davis
himself, the messages of several governors of rebel States, the
disgrace of the vioe-presideet, Mr. Stephens, who formerly
made great efforts to prevent the secession movement, all
to the belief that the Confederation is at this moment being
slowly tam asunder. A silent struggle bee commenced be-
tween those who, satisfied with having vindicated military
honour, have no wish to plunge their country in greater
dimities, sad Acme who, despairing of victory, wish