[Illustration: THE ARMS OF REIMS ON THE PORTE DE PARIS.] Reims accorded an enthusiastic welcome to the youthful and ill-fated Marie Antoinette, on her passage through the city on May 12, 1770, shortly after her arrival in France;[215] and five years subsequently the Rémois were regaled with the splendours of a coronation, when the young King, Louis XVI., and his radiant Queen passed beneath the elaborately wrought escutcheon surmounting the Porte de Paris, expressly forged by a blacksmith of Reims in honour of the occasion,[216] and received from the hands of the Lieutenant des Habitans the three silver keys of the city.[217] The King was crowned on the 11th June by the Cardinal Archbishop of Reims, Charles Antoine de la Roche Aymon, a prelate who had previously baptised, confirmed, and married him, when the six lay peers were represented by Monsieur (the Count of Provence), the Count d'Artois, the Dukes of Orleans, Chartres, and Bourbon, and the Prince de Condé. The royal train was borne by the Prince de Lambesq; the Marshal de Clermont Tonnerre officiated as Constable; and the sceptre, crown, and hand of justice were carried respectively by the Marshals de Contades, de Broglie, and de Nicolai.[218] How the ill-fated King exclaimed, as the crown of Charlemagne was placed upon his brow, 'It hurts me,' even as Henri III. had cried, under the same circumstances, 'It pricks me,' and how his natural benevolence led him to slur over that portion of the coronation oath in which he ought to have bound himself to exterminate all heretics, are matters of history. An innovation to be noted is, that at the banquet at the archiepiscopal palace, after the ceremony, the youthful sovereign did _not_ sit alone in solitary state beneath a canopy of purple velvet, ornamented with golden fleurs de lis, with his table encumbered by the great gold _nef_, the crown and the sceptres, the Constable, sword in hand, close by him, and the Grand Echanson and Ecuyer Tranchant tasting his wine and cutting his food,[219] circumstances under which 'the roast must be without savour and the Ai without bouquet.'[220] The King on this occasion admitted his brothers to his board; and the ecclesiastical peers, the lay peers, the ambassadors, and the great officers of the crown formed, as usual, four groups at the remaining tables, whilst the Queen and her ladies witnessed the gustatory exploits from a gallery. [Illustration: LOUIS XVI. TAKING THE CORONATION OATH AT REIMS (From a painting by Moreau).]