sity of all
Europe, the city of Rheims was filled with a crowd of tourists. The
streets and promenades of the city, usually so quiet, presented an
extraordinary animation. There had been constructed a bazaar, tents,
cafes, places for public games, and at the gates of the city there was
a camp of ten thousand men. To visit this camp was a favorite excursion
for the people and for strangers. The soldiers assembled each evening
before their tents and sang hymns to the sovereign and the glory of the
French arms. In the evening of the 22d of May, these military choruses
were closed by the serment francais, sung by all voices. At the words
"Let us swear to be faithful to Charles!" all heads were uncovered, and
the soldiers waving their helmets and shakos in the air, cried over and
again, "Long live the King!"

On May 24th, the King left Paris with the Dauphin. Before going to
Rheims he stopped at the Chateau of Compiegne, where he remained until
the 27th, amid receptions and fetes and hunts.

M. de Chateaubriand was already at Rheims. He wrote on May 26:--

"The King arrives day after to-morrow. He will be crowned Sunday, the
29th. I shall see him place upon his head a crown that no one dreamed
of when I raised my voice in 1814. I write this page of my Memoirs in
the room where I am forgotten amid the noise. This morning I visited
Saint-Remi and the Cathedral decorated in colored paper. The only clear
idea that I can have of this last edifice is from the decorations of
the Jeanne d'Arc of Schiller, played at Berlin. The opera-scene
painters showed me on the banks of the Spree, what the opera-scene
painters on the banks of the Vesle hide from me. But I amused myself
with the old races, from Clovis with his Franks and his legion come
down from heaven, to Charles VII. with Jeanne d'Arc."

The writer, who some weeks earlier had expressed himself in terms so
dithyrambic as to the consecration, now wrote as follows of this
religious and monarchical solemnity:--

"Under what happy auspices did Louis XVI. ascend the throne! How
popular he was, succeeding to Louis XV.! And yet what did he become?
The present coronation will be the representation of a coronation. It
will not be one; we shall see the Marshal Moncey, an actor at that of
Napoleon, the Marshal who formerly celebrated the death of the tyrant
Louis XVI. in his army, brandish the royal sword at Rheims in his rank
as Count of Flanders or Duke of Aquitaine. To whom can thi