Already, after a sojourn at Boulogne, he had visited Aix-la-Chapelle, the city where Charlemagne’s relics are entombed, and where Victor Hugo in some of his sublimest verse has pictured Charles V. kneeling in prayer to catch the spirit of the mediaeval hero.  Thither went Napoleon, but in no suppliant mood; for when Josephine was offered the arm-bones of the great dead, she also proudly replied that she would not deprive the city of that precious relic, especially as she had the support of an arm as great as that of Charlemagne.[317] The insignia and the sword of that monarch were now brought to Paris, and shed on the ceremony of coronation that historic gleam which was needed to redeem it from tawdry commonplace.

All that money and art could do to invest the affair with pomp and circumstance had already been done.  The advice of the new Master of the Ceremonies, M. de Segur, and the hints of the other nobles who had rallied to the new Empire, had been carefully collated by the untiring brain that now watched over France.  The sum of 1,123,000 francs had been expended on the coronation robes of Emperor and Empress, and far more on crowns and tiaras.  The result was seen in costumes of matchless splendour; the Emperor wore a French coat of red velvet embroidered in gold, a short cloak adorned with bees and the collar of the Legion of Honour in diamonds; and at the archbishop’s palace he assumed the long purple robe of velvet profusely ornamented with ermine, while his brow was encircled by a wreath of laurel, meed of mighty conquerors.  In the pommel of his sword flashed the famous Pitt diamond, which, after swelling the family fortune of the British statesman, fell to the Regent of France, and now graced the coronation of her Dictator.  The Empress, radiant with joy at her now indissoluble union, bore her splendours with an easy grace that charmed all beholders and gave her an almost girlish air.  She wore a robe of white satin, trimmed with silver and gold and besprinkled with golden bees:  her waist and shoulders glittered with diamonds, while on her brows rested a diadem of the finest diamonds and pearls valued at more than a million francs.[318] The curious might remember that for a necklace of less than twice that value the fair fame of Marie Antoinette had been clouded over and the House of Bourbon shaken to its base.

The stately procession began with an odd incident:  Napoleon and Josephine, misled apparently by the all-pervading splendour of the new state carriage, seated themselves on the wrong side, that is, in the seats destined for Joseph and Louis:  the mistake was at once made good, with some merriment; but the superstitious saw in it an omen of evil.[319] And now, amidst much enthusiasm and far greater curiosity, the procession wound along through the Rue Nicaise and the Rue St. Honore—­streets where Bonaparte had won his spurs on the day of Vendemiaire—­over the Pont-Neuf, and so to the venerable cathedral, where