The advantage really is with Napoleon, who
furnishes his figurants to Charles X. The figure of the Emperor
thenceforth dominates all. It appears in the background of events
and ideas. The leaflets of the good time to which we have attained
shrivel at the glance of his eagles."
Charles X. left Compiegne the 27th of May in the morning, and
slept at Fismes. The next day, the 28th, he had just quitted this
town and was descending a steep hill, when several batteries of
the royal guard fired a salute at his departure; the horses,
frightened, took flight. Thanks to the skill of the postilion,
there was no accident to the King; but a carriage of his suite, in
which were the Duke of Aumont, the Count de Cosse, the Duke of
Damas, and the Count Curial, was overturned and broken, and the
last two wounded. At noon Charles X. arrived at a league and a
half from Rheims, at the village of Tinqueux, where he was awaited
by the Dukes of Orleans and Bourbon, the officers of his civil and
military household, the authorities of Rheims, the legion of the
mounted National Guard of Paris, etc. He entered the gold
carriage,--termed the coronation carriage,--where the Dauphin and
the Dukes of Orleans and Bourbon took their places beside him. The
cortege then took up its march. From Tinqueux to Rheims, the royal
coach, gleaming with gold, passed under a long arcade of triumphal
arches adorned with streamers and foliage.
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