“David’s painting, and many other pictures taken during the coronation, at the very spot and time, have well represented the empress at the feet of Napoleon, who crowns her; then the pope, the priests, and even persons who were four hundred miles away—­as, for instance, the emperor’s mother, who was then in Rome, but whom David nevertheless brings into his picture.  But nothing, however, can give us a true description, or even an approximate idea, of this alike touching and lofty scene, where a great man by his own efforts ascends a throne, for on this occasion he was full of gratitude and emotion.

“When the moment had come for Josephine to take her part in the great drama, the empress rose from the throne and approached the altar, where the emperor was waiting for her; she was followed by the ladies of the palace and by her whole court, while the Princesses Caroline, Julie (the wife of Joseph), the Princess Elise, and Louis Bonaparte, carried the trail of her robe.  One of the most admirable features in the beauty of the Empress Josephine was not her fine, graceful figure, but the bearing of her head—­the gracious and noble manner in which she moved and walked.  I have had the honor to be introduced to many ‘real princesses,’ as they are termed, in the Faubourg St. Germain, and I can in all sincerity say that I have never seen one who appeared to me so imposing as the Empress Josephine.  In her, grace and majesty were blended.  When she put on the grand imperial robes there was no woman whose appearance could be more royal in demeanor, and, in reality, none who understood the art of occupying a throne as well as she, though she never had been instructed in it.

“I read all that I have now said in the eyes of Napoleon.  He watched with delight the empress as she moved toward him; and as she knelt before him, ... as the tears she could not restrain streamed down her folded hands, which were lifted up to him more than to God, at that moment, when Napoleon, or, much more, when Bonaparte was for her the real and visible Providence, there passed over these two beings one of those fugitive minutes, unique in its kind, and never to be recalled in a whole life, and which fills to overflowing the void of many long years.  The emperor performed with an unexcelled grace the most minute details of every part of the subsequent ceremony, especially when the moment came to crown the empress.

“This ceremony was to be performed by the emperor himself, who, after he had received the small closed crown surmounted by a cross, placed it first on his own head, and then afterward on the head of the empress.  He performed these two movements with a most exquisite slowness, which was indeed admirable.  But at the moment when he was to crown her who was for him, according to a prophecy, ’the star of happiness,’ he made himself, if I dare use the expression, coquettish.  He arranged this little crown which was to stand over her coronet of diamonds, and placed it on her head, then lifted it up to replace it in another way, as if to promise her that this crown would be light and pleasant to her.” [Footnote:  Abrantes, “Memoires.”]