emi-tribal polity and modern States where the peoples were
awakening to a sense of their nationality, Napoleon was now in a
position to clear the way for his great experiment. He had two charms
wherewith to work, material prosperity and his gift of touching the
popular imagination. The former of these was already silently working
in his favour: the latter was first essayed at the coronation.

Already, after a sojourn at Boulogne, he had visited Aix-la-Chapelle,
the city where Charlemagne's relics are entombed, and where Victor
Hugo in some of his sublimest verse has pictured Charles V. kneeling
in prayer to catch the spirit of the mediaeval hero. Thither went
Napoleon, but in no suppliant mood; for when Josephine was offered the
arm-bones of the great dead, she also proudly replied that she would
not deprive the city of that precious relic, especially as she had the
support of an arm as great as that of Charlemagne.[317] The insignia
and the sword of that monarch were now brought to Paris, and shed on
the ceremony of coronation that historic gleam which was needed to
redeem it from tawdry commonplace.

All that money and art could do to invest the affair with pomp and
circumstance had already been done. The advice of the new Master of
the Ceremonies, M. de Segur, and the hints of the other nobles who had
rallied to the new Empire, had been carefully collated by the untiring
brain that now watched over France. The sum of 1,123,000 francs had
been expended on the coronation robes of Emperor and Empress, and far
more on crowns and tiaras. The result was seen in costumes of
matchless splendour; the Emperor wore a French coat of red velvet
embroidered in gold, a short cloak adorned with bees and the collar of
the Legion of Honour in diamonds; and at the archbishop's palace he
assumed the long purple robe of velvet profusely ornamented with
ermine, while his brow was encircled by a wreath of laurel, meed of
mighty conquerors. In the pommel of his sword flashed the famous Pitt
diamond, which, after swelling the family fortune of the British
statesman, fell to the Regent of France, and now graced the coronation
of her Dictator. The Empress, radiant with joy at her now indissoluble
union, bore her splendours with an easy grace that charmed all
beholders and gave her an almost girlish air. She wore a robe of white
satin, trimmed with silver and gold and besprinkled with golden bees:
her waist and shoulders glittered with diamond