After the station of
Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, there was a second at Saint-Roch, then
a third and last at the Assumption. When the special prayers of
the close of the jubilee had been said at this last parish, the
immense cortege resumed its march to the place where Louis XVI.
had brought his head to the sacrilegious scaffold. The day chosen
for the expiatory solemnity was the 3d of May, the anniversary of
the return of Louis XVIII. to Paris in 1814, and then a political
idea was connected with the religious ceremony. A vast pavilion
surmounted by a cross hung with draperies in violet velvet, and
enclosing an altar, which was reached on four sides by four
stairways of ten steps each, occupied the very place where, the
10th of January, 1793, the scaffold of the Martyr-King had been
erected, in the middle of the Place called successively the Place
Louis XV. and the Place de La Concorde, and which was thenceforth
to be called the Place Louis XVI.
The account in the MONITEUR says:--
"A first salvo of artillery announced the arrival of the
procession. It presented as imposing a tableau as could be
contemplated. This old French nation--the heir of its sixty kings
at the head--marched, preceded by the gifts made by Charlemagne to
the Church of Paris, and the religious trophies that Saint Louis
brought from the holy places. The priests ascend to the altar.
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