Unfortunately, the weather was terrible; a thaw had begun and it was
raining in torrents. The Champ de Mars was a sea of mud. The courtiers
who, on the 2d of December, had so belauded the sun, representing it as a
sharer in the festival, a docile slave of the Emperor, were obliged to
acknowledge that it was raining. Madame de Remusat made a very true remark
about this; she said with truth that one of the commonest, though one of
the absurdest, flatteries of every time, was that of pretending that a
sovereign's need of fine weather was sure to bring it. "At the Tuileries,"
she said, "I noticed the opinion that the Emperor needed only to appoint a
review or a hunt for a certain day, and that day would be pleasant.
Whenever that happened, a great deal was said about it, while silence was
kept about rainy or foggy weather. This is exactly what used to happen
under Louis XIV. For the honor of sovereigns I should prefer that they
accepted this childish flattery with indifference or disgust, and that no
one would think of offering it. It was impossible to deny that it rained
during the distribution of the eagles at the Champ de Mars; but how many
people I met the next day, who assured me that the rain had not wet them!"

In spite of the bad weather, an enormous crowd lined the road through
which the Imperial procession was to pass. The terraces of the Tuileries,
the Place de la Concorde, the _quais_ were thronged. Numberless spectators
covered the slopes of the Champ de Mars. The ever obsequious _Moniteur_,
in its official account of the ceremony, said; "If the spectators were
uncomfortable, there was not one who was not consoled by the feeling that
held him there, and by the expression of his wishes which the applause
made very clear."

At noon the Emperor and the Empress, followed by their suite, left the
Tuileries in the order observed at the coronation, passed down the broad
road, over the Pont Tournant, through the Place de la Concorde, to the