But now the republicans were silent:  before this new Julius Caesar they dare not lift up their swords, for the power belonged to him, and that he knew how to punish had been seen by trembling France not long ago at the execution of George Cadoudal and his associates, the people sanctioning those executions.

There was no Brutus there to plunge the dagger into the breast of the new Cassar.  His was the victory, the throne, the crown; and all France was in joyous excitement at this new triumph, that the pope himself should come from Rome to Paris so as to place the crown on the head of an emperor by the grace of the people, and to make of the elect of the people an elect of God.

The day had scarcely begun to dawn when all the streets of Paris through which the imperial as well as the papal procession had to move toward Notre Dame were filled with wave-like masses of human beings, who soon occupied not only the streets but all the windows and all the roofs of the houses.  Those who were fortunate enough to be provided with cards of admission into Notre Dame, went at six o’clock in the morning to the cathedral, for whose adorning during the last fourteen days more than a thousand workmen had been busy, and who had not yet quite finished their work, retiring only when the approach of the pope and of his suite was announced.  In the interior of the Tuileries began from the commencement of the day, on three different sides, a lively movement.

Here, in the apartments which the pope occupied, gathered together the cardinals, the clergy, and all the church dignitaries who in the pope’s suite were to proceed to Notre Dame.

There, in the apartments of the emperor, a host of courtiers and officers waited from early dawn for the moment when the toilet of the emperor should be completed, and he should go to the great throne-room, where the empress and the imperial family would await him.

The greatest excitement, however, naturally prevailed in the apartments of the empress, whose toilet occupied a host of chambermaids and ladies of the court, and which had already been for months the subject of thought, labor, and art, for painter and embroiderer, and for all manner of professions, as well as for the master of ceremonies.  For this imperial toilet-ceremonial was to be in accordance with the traditions of ancient France, but was not, at the same time, to be a mere imitation of the coronation-toilet of the Bourbons, whom the revolution had dethroned, the same revolution which had opened for Napoleon the way to the throne.

For this important ceremony, therefore, special costumes, somewhat resembling those of former centuries, had been found.  The painter Ingres had furnished the designs for these costumes, and also plans for the procession and for the groupings in Notre Dame; he had prepared all this in pictures of great effect for the emperor’s inspection.  But in order to show to advantage the several costumes, as well