This carriage, prepared expressly for this day’s celebration, was of enormous size and breadth, with windows on all sides, and entirely alike in its front and back seats.  It therefore happened that their imperial majesties, on entering the carriage, not thinking of the direction to be taken, sat down on the front instead of the back seat.

The empress noticed the mistake, and when she laughingly called the emperor’s attention to it, they both took the back seat without a suspicion that this little error was a bad omen.

Another little mishap occurred before they entered Notre Dame, which threw a gloom of sad forebodings and fear over the heart of the empress.

Whilst alighting out of the carriage, the empress, whose hand was occupied in the holding and carrying her robe and mantle, let slip from her fingers the imperial ring which the pope had brought her for a present, and which before the coronation he was to bless, according to the accustomed ceremonial, and then place it on her finger as a token of remembrance of the holy consecration.  This made Josephine tremble, and her cheeks turned pale, especially as the ring could nowhere be found.  It had rolled a considerable distance from the carriage, and only after some minutes did Eugene Beauharnais find it and bring it to his mother, to her great delight and satisfaction. [Footnote:  Aubenas, “Histoire de l’Imperatrice Josephine,” vol. ii., p. 283.]

At last the procession entered Notre Dame, and the brilliant solemnity began.  It is not our purpose to describe here again the ceremony which has been in all its details portrayed in so many works, and to repeat the solemn addresses and the different events of this great and memorable day.  It is with Josephine we have to do, and with what concerns her individual destiny—­that alone claims our attentive consideration.

One event, however, is to be mentioned.  At the moment the emperor took from the altar the so-called crown of Charles the Great, and with firm hand placed it on his head—­at the moment when he assumed the place of the ancient Kings of France, a small stone, which had detached itself from the cupola, fell down, touched his head, leaped on his shoulder, slipped down his imperial mantle, and rolled over the altar-steps near to the pope’s throne, where it remained still until an Italian priest picked it up. [Footnote:  Abrantes.  “Memoires,” vol. vii., p. 258.]

At the moment of his loftiest grandeur the destiny of his future aimed its first stone at him, and marked him as the one upon whom its anger was to fall.

This was the third evil omen of the day; but fortunately Josephine had not noticed it.  Her whole soul was absorbed in the sacred rites; and, after the emperor had crowned himself, her heart trembled with deep emotion and agitation, for now the moment had come when she was to take her part in the solemnity.

The Duchess d’Abrantes, who was quite near Josephine, and an immediate witness of the whole celebration, depicts the next scene in the following words:  “The moment when the greatest number of eyes were fixed upon the altar-steps where the emperor stood, was when Josephine was crowned by him, and was solemnly consecrated Empress of the French.  What a moment! ... what a homage!  What a proof of love manifested to her from him who so much loved her!