A short time subsequently, while playing with a favourite fawn, he hid himself among the shrubs in the gardens of the Tuileries, and remained so long in his concealment that his attendants became alarmed and were compelled to inform the Queen that although they had sought the King everywhere, to entreat him to return, they could not ascertain where he had gone.  Marie in great alarm caused all around her to join in the search, while she remained at one of the windows in a state of agonizing anxiety.  At length the retreat of the fugitive was found, and M. de Souvre threatened him with the rod.

“As you please,” he said sullenly; “but if, in order to satisfy the Queen, you lay a hand upon me to-day, I will keep up appearances with you, but I will never forget it.” [89]

Only a few days subsequently (2nd of October) Louis XIII, attended by his Court, proceeded to Rheims for his coronation, the royal ornaments used upon such occasions having been removed from St. Denis to that city.  The Cardinal de Joyeuse performed the ceremony, the archiepiscopal chair being vacant at the time; and the Princes de Conde and de Conti, the Comte de Soissons, the Ducs de Nevers, d’Elboeuf,[90] and d’Epernon represented the ancient Dukes of Burgundy, Normandy, and Aquitaine, and the Counts of Toulouse, Flanders, and Champagne.

[Illustration:  LOUIS XIII.  KING OF FRANCE.]

On the morrow the young sovereign was invested with the Order of the Holy Ghost, which he immediately afterwards conferred upon the Prince de Conde, and on Tuesday the 19th he stood sponsor for the child of the Baron de Tour; after which he proceeded to St. Marcou, where he touched a number of persons suffering under the loathsome disease which it was the superstition of the age to believe could be removed by contact with the royal hand.

On the 30th of the month the Court returned to Paris, and was met at the Porte St. Antoine by the civic authorities, at the head of two hundred mounted citizens, amid a cannonade from the Bastille, and ceaseless flourishes of trumpets and hautboys.  The Regent had, however, preceded her son to the city, and stood in a balcony at the house of Zamet to see him pass, where he no sooner perceived her than he withdrew his plumed cap, which he did not resume until having halted beneath the window he had saluted her with a profound bow.  He then proceeded by torchlight to the Louvre, accompanied throughout his progress by the same acclamations of loyalty and enthusiasm as had greeted the ears of his dead father only a few months previously.