From the gates of the
city to the Cathedral, flowers strewed the sand that covered the
ground. All the houses were hung with carpets and garlands; at all
the windows, from all the balconies, from all the roofs,
innumerable spectators shouted their acclamations; the cortege
advanced to the sound of all the bells of the city, and to the
noise of a salvo of artillery of one hundred and one guns. The
King was received under a dais at the door of the metropolitan
church, by the Archbishop of Rheims in his pontifical robes, and
accompanied by his suffragans, the Bishops of Soissons, Beauvais,
Chalons, and Amiens. The Archbishop presented the holy water to
the sovereign, who knelt, kissed the Gospels, then was escorted
processionally into the sanctuary. His prie-dieu was placed at
fifteen feet from the altar, on a platform, about which was a
magnificent canopy hung from the ceiling of the Cathedral.
The Dauphiness had entered her gallery with the Duchess of Berry
and the princesses of the blood. The Archbishop celebrated the
vespers, and then the Cardinal de La Fare ascended the pulpit and
delivered a sermon in which he said:--
"God of Clovis, if there is here below a spectacle capable of
interesting Thy infinite Majesty, would it not be that which in
this solemnity fixes universal attention and invites and unites
all prayers? These days of saintly privilege, in which the hero of
Tolbiac, and thirteen centuries after him, the sixty-fifth of his
successors have come to the same temple to receive the same
consecration, can they be confounded with the multitude of human
events, to be buried and lost in the endless annals? To what, O
great God! if not to the persistence of Thy immutable decrees, can
we attribute, on this earth, always so changing and mobile, the
supernatural gift of this miraculous duration?"
The Cardinal covered with praises not only the King, but the
Dauphin, the Dauphiness, the Duchess of Berry, the Duke of
Bordeaux.
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