The ceremony of the reception of the knights once finished, the King quitted his throne in the sanctuary, after having made the required obeisances.  The completory was next sung.  Then all the members of the order re-escorted the monarch to his apartments in the same order and with the same ceremony that he had been escorted to the Cathedral.

After the ceremony, Charles X. held a chapter of the order, in which he named twenty-one cordons bleus:  the Dukes d’Uzes, de Chevreuse, de Boissac, de Mortemart, de Fitz-James, de Lorges, de Polignac, de Maille, de Castries, de Narbonne, the Marshal Count Jordan, the Marshal Duke of Dalmatia, the Marshal Duke of Treviso, the Marquis de la Suze, the Marquis de Bre’ze’, Marquis de Pastoret, Count de La Ferronays, Viscount d’Agoult, Marquis d’Autichamp, Ravez, Count Juste de Noailles.  By an ordinance of the same day he named to be Dukes, the Count Charles de Damas, Count d’Escars, and the Marquis de Riviere.

The next day, May 31, the King after having heard Mass in his apartments,—­left the palace at ten o’clock with a brilliant cortege.  Preceded by the hussars of the guard, and by the pages, and followed by a numerous staff, he was in the uniform of a general officer, on a white horse, whose saddle of scarlet velvet was ornamented with embroideries and fringe of gold.  He had at his right the Dauphin on a white horse, and the Duke of Bourbon on a bay horse; at his left the Duke of Orleans, who wore the uniform of a colonel-general of hussars, and rode an iron-gray horse.  Following the cortege was an open carriage; at the back the Dauphiness with the Duchess of Berry at her left, and in front the Duchess of Orleans and Madame of Orleans, her sister-in-law.  The route lay through an immense crowd to the Hospital of Saint Marcoul.  When he arrived there, the King dismounted and offered up a prayer in the chapel.  Then he ascended to the halls, where were assembled one hundred and twenty-one scrofulous patients.  He touched them, making a cross with his finger on the brow, while the first physician held the head and the captain of the guard the hand.  The King said to each:  “May God heal thee!  The King touches thee!” Then he thanked the sisters who had charge of the hospital for all the care they gave to the solacing of suffering humanity.  The pious sisters knelt at the feet of the sovereign, and begged his benediction, according to an ancient custom.  The King gave it to them, and allowed them to kiss his hand.  The holy women wept with joy.

Charles X., followed by his cortege, next proceeded to the abbey of Saint Remi, which dates from the eleventh century, and performed his devotions on the tomb of the saint whose shrine had been discovered.  Then he remounted and went to review the troops of the camp of Saint Leonard, under the walls of the city, in a vast plain, along the river Vesle, on the right of the road to Chalons.  In the midst of this plain rises a grassy hillock, above which was placed the portrait of the King; below, on a background of soil, was this inscription in bluets and marguerites,—­