When the people greeted their new emperor with loud cries of joy and thunders of applause, Napoleon, his countenance illumined with exultation, exclaimed:  “How glorious a music is this!  These acclamations and greetings sound as sweet and soft as the voice of Josephine!  How proud and happy I am, to be loved by such a people[14]!”

[Footnote 14:  Bourrienne, vol. iv., p. 288.]

But his proud ambition was not yet sated.  As he bad once said, upon entering the Tuileries as first consul, “It is not enough to be in the Tuileries; one must also remain there”—­he now said:  “It is not enough to have been made emperor by the French people; one must also have received his consecration as emperor from the Pope of Rome.”

And Napoleon was now mighty enough to give laws to the world; not only to bend France, but also foreign sovereigns, to his will.

Napoleon desired for his crown the papal consecration; and the Pope left the holy city and repaired to Paris, to give the new emperor the blessing of the Church in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame.  This was a new halo around Napoleon’s head—­a new, an unbounded triumph, which he celebrated over France, over the whole world and its prejudices, and over all the dynasties by the “grace of God.”  The Pope came to Paris to crown the emperor.  The German emperors had been compelled to make a pilgrimage to Rome, to receive the papal benediction, and now the Pope made a pilgrimage to Paris to crown the French emperor, and acknowledge the son of the Revolution as the consecrated son of the Church.  All France was intoxicated with delight at this intelligence; all France adored the hero, who made of the wonders of fiction a reality, and converted even the holy chair at Rome into the footstool of his grandeur.  Napoleon’s journey with Josephine through France, undertaken while they awaited the Pope’s coming, was, therefore, a single, continuous triumph.  It was not only the people who received him with shouts of joy, but the Church also sang to him, everywhere, her sanctus, sanctus, and the priests received him at the doors of their churches with loud benedictions, extolling him as the savior of France.  Everywhere, the imperial couple was received with universal exultation, with the ringing of bells, with triumphal arches, and solemn addresses of welcome, the latter partaking sometimes of a transcendental nature.

“God created Bonaparte,” said the Prefect of Arras, in his enthusiastic address to the emperor—­“God created Bonaparte, and then He rested.”  And Count Louis of Narbonne, at that time not yet won over by the emperor, and not yet grand-marshal of the imperial court, whispered, quite audibly:  “God would have done better had He rested a little sooner!”