still awaited its
foundation. It is at the very place where the unfortunate sovereign had
been executed that the monument was to be constructed. The cortege left
Notre-Dame and directed its course first to the Church of
Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois. The Chamber of Peers, the Chamber of
Deputies, all the functionaries, all the authorities of the Department
of the Seine, followed the King and Dauphin, who advanced, accompanied
by the ministers, the marshals, the officers of their houses, cordons
bleus, cordons rouges. Never since the end of the old regime had such a
multitude of priests been seen defiling through the streets of Paris.
The pupils of all the seminaries, the almoners of all the colleges, the
priests of all the parishes and all the chapels, stretched out in an
endless double line, at the end of which appeared the Nuncio of the
Pope, Cardinals de Latil, de Croi, and de La Fare, the Archbishop of
Paris, and a crowd of prelates. 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. Three times in succession they raise
to heaven the cry for pardon and pity. All the spectators fall upon
their knees. A profound, absolute