same salutes should be fired as at Paris, and that the fleets should be decorated.  A beautiful evening favored the special rejoicings at the capital where the houses were voluntarily illuminated.  Those who seek to ascertain by external appearances the real feelings of a people amid events of this kind, remarked that the topmost stories of houses in the faubourgs were as well lighted as the most magnificent hotels and finest houses of the capital.  Public buildings, which under other circumstances are remarkable from the darkness of the surrounding houses, were scarcely seen amid this profusion of lights with which public gratitude had lighted every window.  The boatmen gave an impromptu fete which lasted part of the night, and to witness which an immense crowd covered the shore, testifying the most ardent joy.  This people, who for thirty years had passed through so many different emotions, and who had celebrated so many victories, showed as much enthusiasm as if it had been their first fete, or a happy change in their destiny.  Verses were sung or recited at all the theaters; and there was no poetic formula, from the ode to the fable, which was not made use of to celebrate the event of the 20th of March, 1811.  I learned from a well-informed person that the sum of one hundred thousand francs from the private funds of the Emperor was distributed by M. Dequevauvilliers, secretary of the treasury of the chamber, among the authors of the poetry sent to the Tuileries; and finally, fashion, which makes use of the least events, invented stuffs called roi-de-Rome, as in the old regime they had been called dauphin.  On the evening of the 20th of March at nine o’clock the King of Rome was anointed in the chapel of the Tuileries.  This was a most magnificent ceremony.  The Emperor Napoleon, surrounded by the princes and princesses of his whole court, placed him in the center of the chapel on a sofa surmounted by a canopy with a Prie-Dieu.  Between the altar and the balustrade had been placed on a carpet of white velvet a pedestal of granite surmounted by a hand some silver gilt vase to be used as a baptismal font.  The Emperor was grave; but paternal tenderness diffused over his face an expression of happiness, and it might have been said that he felt himself half relieved of the burdens of the Empire on seeing the august child who seemed destined to receive it one day from the hands of his father.  When he approached the baptismal font to present the child to be anointed there was a moment of silence and religious contemplation, which formed a touching contrast to the vociferous gayety which at the same moment animated the crowd outside, whom the spectacle of the brilliant fireworks had drawn from all parts of Paris to the Tuileries.

Madame Blanchard, who as I have said had set out in her balloon an hour after the birth of the King of Rome, to carry the news into all places she passed, first descended at Saint-Tiebault near Lagny, and from there, as the wind had subsided, returned to Paris.  Her balloon rose after her departure, and fell at a place six leagues farther on, and the inhabitants, finding in this balloon only clothing and provisions, did not doubt that the intrepid aeronaut had been killed; but fortunately just as her death was announced at Paris, Madame Blanchard herself arrived and dispelled all anxiety.