At last, on the 25th day of November, the pope entered Fontainebleau, where the emperor and the empress had hastened to receive him.  No sooner was the pope’s approach announced, than Napoleon mounted his horse and rode to meet him some distance on the way.  In the centre of the road took place the first interview between the representative of Christendom and the youngest son of the Church, a son who now sat on the throne of those who in former times had enjoyed the privilege of being called the elder sons of the Church.

The pope alighted from his carriage as soon as the emperor was in sight; Napoleon dismounted and hastened to meet and embrace tenderly his holiness, and then to ascend with him the carriage, the question of precedence remaining undecided, as the pope and the emperor entered the carriage at the same time from opposite sides.

Josephine, surrounded by the official dignitaries, the ministers of state, and all the generals, received the pope under the peristyle of the palace of Fontainebleau; and then, after Napoleon had led him into his room, Josephine, accompanied by her ladies, went to welcome Pius, not as empress, but as an humble, devout daughter of the Church, who wished to implore a blessing from the Holy Father of Christendom.  Josephine was deeply moved; her whole being was agitated and exalted at once by this greatest of all the privileges which destiny had reserved for her, and by this consecration which she was to receive at the hands of the vicar of Christ.

As the pope, agreeably affected by this respect and emotion of the empress, offered her his hand with a genial smile, Josephine, humble as a little girl, sank down on her knees before him, kissed his hand, and with streaming eyes implored his benediction.  Pius, in his soft, winning manner, promised to love her as a daughter, and that she should ever find in him a father.

The empress, deeply moved by this affectionate condescension of the pope, and impressed by the importance and solemnity of the moment, bade her ladies withdraw, whilst she, in solitude and silence, as a confessing child before the priest, should unveil her innermost heart to the Holy Father.  She then sank down upon her knees, and, stammering, ashamed, with her voice broken by her sobs, acknowledged to the pope that her marriage to Napoleon had never received, the consecration of the Church; that, contracted amid the stormy days of the revolution, it still lacked the blessing hand of the priest, and that her own husband was to be blamed for this neglect.  In vain had she often besought him that, since he had restored the Church to Prance, he should himself give to the world a striking example of his own return by having his marriage blessed by it.  But Napoleon refused, although he had been the cause of Cardinal Caprera giving to the marriage of his sister Caroline Murat, long after it had been contracted, the blessing of the Church.

Pius heard this confession of his imperial penitent with holy resentment, and he promised her his aid and protection, assuring her he would refuse the act of coronation if the ecclesiastical marriage did not precede it.