The King, who followed them,
seated himself on a throne in the choir and they arranged
themselves in their stalls to the right and left. The princesses
occupied the same gallery as the day before. The clergy chanted
the vespers. Then the two columns formed in a double rank and the
ceremony commenced. There was a long series of obeisances. The
King made twenty himself, eleven before vespers, nine after. The
reception began with the ecclesiastical commanders and the laymen
came afterwards.
The solemnity was less imposing than that of the coronation. Count
d'Haussonville remarked it: "The military array of so many
marshals and generals clad in brilliant uniforms, the pomp of the
ceremonies to the slow and majestic sound of the organ filling the
vast nave of the church, had succeeded, the preceding day, in
redeeming for the spectators, and for me particularly, whatever
was a little superannuated in the minute observance of a ritual
that had come down from the Middle Ages. I felt myself, on the
contrary, rather surprised than edified by the character, partly
religious, partly worldly, but far more worldly than religious,
that I witnessed on the morrow. Most of these gentlemen were known
to me. I had met nearly all of them in my mother's or
grandmother's salon. I had not been insensible to the fine air
given them by the cordon bleu (worn under the frock coat, usually,
or on great occasions over a coat covered with gold lace and
shining decorations), the traditional object of ambition for those
most in favor at court; but they seemed to me to present a
constrained figure, as I saw them soberly ranged in the stalls of
the canons, clad in a costume of no particular epoch, wrapped in
long mantles of motley color, and following, with a distracted
air, the phases of a ceremony to which they were so little
accustomed that they were constantly rising, sitting down, and
kneeling at the wrong time.
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