Ladies of Honor, Ladies of the Palace, These dolls thus arrayed he
arranged on a plan in relief of the Interior of Notre Dame, and carrying
it to the Emperor, said: "Sire, I bring Your Majesty something better than
the drawings." Napoleon thought the idea ingenious, and used the dolls and
the plan to make every official understand his place and his duty.

The _Moniteur_ of the 9th Brumaire, Year XIII, (November 30, 1804),
published in advance all the details of the ceremony, which the Emperor
had fixed with as much care as if it had been the plan of a battle. A
difficulty arose on this occasion. The Pope had wished Napoleon to receive
the holy communion in public on the day of the coronation, and Napoleon
had given the matter thought. The Grand Master of Ceremonies, M. de Segur,
brought up against the proposition the necessity of a preliminary
confession and the possibility that absolution might be denied him.
"That's not the difficulty," said the Emperor, "the Holy Father knows how
to distinguish between the sins of Caesar and those of the man," Then he
added: "I know that I ought to give an example of respect for religion and
its ministers; so you see that I treat the priests well, go regularly to
mass, and listen to it with all due seriousness and solemnity. But every
one knows me, and how would it be for me, and for others, if I should go
too far? Would not that be setting an example of hypocrisy, and committing
a sacrilege?" The Pope did not insist upon it. This dread of committing
sacrilege Napoleon referred to again at Saint Helena, in 1816: "Everything
was done," he said then, "to persuade me to go in great pomp to communion
at Notre Dame, after the fashion of our kings; I absolutely refused; I did
not believe enough, I said, to get any good from it, and yet I believed
too much to consent to be guilty of sacrilege."

Another difficulty which gave the Pope much anxiety, and was not settled
in the formalities of the coronation, was whether the Emperor should