d
mantles, uttering the traditional prayers for the possession of the
virtues and powers which each might seem to typify. But when he was
about to crown the Emperor, he was gently waved aside, and Napoleon with
his own hands crowned himself. A thrill ran through the august assembly,
either of pity for the feelings of the aged pontiff or of admiration at
the "noble and legitimate pride" of the great captain who claimed as
wholly his own the crown which his own right arm had won. Then the
_cortege_ slowly returned to the middle of the nave, where a lofty
throne had been reared.

Another omen now startled those who laid store by trifles. It was
noticed that the sovereigns in ascending the steps nearly fell
backwards under the weight of their robes and trains, though in the
case of Josephine the anxious moment may have been due to the
carelessness, whether accidental or studied, of her "mantle-bearers."
But to those who looked beneath the surface of things was not this an
all-absorbing portent, that all this religious pomp should be removed
by scarcely eleven years from the time when this same nave echoed to
the shouts and gleamed with the torches of the worshippers of the
newly enthroned Goddess of Reason?

Revolutionary feelings were not wholly dead, but they now vented
themselves merely in gibes. On the night before the coronation the walls
of Paris were adorned with posters announcing: _The last Representation
of the French Revolution--for the Benefit of a poor Corsican Family._
And after the event there were inquiries why the new throne had no
_glands d'or;_ the answer suggested because it was _sanglant_.[320]
Beyond these quips and jests the Jacobins and royalists did not go. When
the phrase _your subjects_ was publicly assigned to the Corps Legislatif
by its courtier-like president, Fontanes, there was a flutter of wrath
among those who had hoped that the new Empire was to be republican. But
it quickly passed away; and no Frenchman, except perhaps Carnot, made so
manly a protest as the man of genius at Vienna, who had composed the
"Sinfonia Eroica," and with grand republican simplicity inscribed it,
"Beethoven a Bonaparte." When the master heard that his former hero had
taken the imperial crown, he tore off the dedication with a volley of
curses on the renegade and tyrant; and in later years he dedicated the
immortal work to the _memory_ of a great man.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XX