The civil marriage being concluded, the imperial pair and the wedding guests passed into the theatre, where a cantata, composed by Auber for the occasion, was sung.  The empress, robed in lace and glittering in jewels, seemed, says an eye-witness, to realize the picture presented of herself in the composer’s words:—­

  “Espagne bien aimee,
    Ou le ciel est vermeil,
  C’est toi qui l’as formee
    D’un rayon de soleil."[1]

  [Footnote 1: 
  Ah, beautiful Spain,
    With thy skies ever bright,
  Thou hast formed her for us
    From a ray of sunlight.]

When the cantata had been sung, the Grand Master of the Ceremonies conducted the bride, as yet only half married, back to the Elysee.

The next morning all Paris was astir to see the wedding procession pass to the cathedral of Notre Dame.  Early in the morning the emperor had repaired to the Elysee, where, in the chapel, he and the empress had heard mass, and after making their confession, had partaken of the Holy Communion.  There were two hundred thousand sightseers in Paris that day, in addition to the usual population.

The empress wore upon her golden hair the crown that the First Napoleon had placed upon the head of Marie Louise.  The body of the church was filled with men,—­ambassadors, military and naval officers, and high officials.  Their wives were in the galleries.  As the great doors of the cathedral were opened to admit the bridal procession, a broad path of light gleamed from the door up to the altar, adding additional brilliancy to the glittering scene.  Up the long aisle the emperor led his bride, flashing with the light of jewels, among them the unlucky regent diamond, which glittered on her bosom.  After the Spanish fashion, she crossed her brow, her lips, her heart, her thumb, as she knelt for the nuptial benediction.  The ceremony over, the archbishop conducted the married pair to the porch of the cathedral, and they drove along the Quai to the Tuileries.

The first favor the empress asked of her husband was the pardon of more than four thousand unfortunate persons still exiled or imprisoned for their share in the risings that succeeded the coup d’etat.

When Washington Irving heard of the marriage, he wrote:  “Louis Napoleon and Eugenie de Montijo,—­Emperor and Empress of France!  He whom I received as an exile at my cottage on the Hudson, she whom at Granada I have dandled on my knee!  The last I saw of Eugenie de Montijo, she and her gay circle had swept away a charming young girl, beautiful and accomplished, my dear young friend, into their career of fashionable dissipation.  Now Eugenie is on a throne, and the other a voluntary recluse in a convent of one of the most rigorous Orders.”  This convent is near Biarritz, where the nuns take vows of silence like the monks of La Trappe.[1] The empress when at Biarritz never failed to visit her former friend, who was permitted to converse with her.