The day after their arrival the Queen bestowed the Order of the Garter on Napoleon. Following this impressive ceremony was a state banquet at which the famous Windsor gold service made its appearance; and at the gala performance in the court theatre that evening a verse in honor of Napoleon was interpolated in the English National hymn. The next day London held a grand celebration. The Emperor and Empress were lauded in the most flattering songs and speeches; and the people who had been the deadly enemies of Napoleon the First, the country in which Prince Louis Napoleon had lived as a refugee, ill, friendless, often in dire need, now hailed Napoleon the Third as its friend and ally. The results of this visit to Great Britain were most gratifying to the imperial pair. The enthusiasm of the British made an excellent impression in France and strengthened public confidence in Napoleon’s wisdom and prudence, while the friendship of the English royal family added importance to the young dynasty in Germany, and left no excuse for other sovereign houses to hold aloof from the Tuileries. Lastly, not only were Eugénie’s fondest hopes realized, but she had also made a life-long friend. At their very first meeting Eugénie’s charm completely won the Queen’s heart. This beautiful woman with her ease and dignity of manner bore little resemblance to the notorious belle of gay resorts as she had been described; and forgetting all these unpleasant rumors, she succumbed at once to the Empress’s attractions. The friendship thus begun grew closer with subsequent meetings and continued unbroken for many years. A few months later, the Queen of England with her husband and two eldest children came to Paris to return her new friend’s visit. For more than four hundred years no English sovereign had visited the French capital, so it was an event of great importance. The Queen, who writes with enthusiasm in her diary of the journey to France, describes their reception as follows: “On the eighteenth of August we left Osborne about five o’clock in the morning on our yacht, the Victoria and Albert, reaching Boulogne about two, where we were greeted with shouts of welcome from the people and troops drawn up along the shore. The Emperor, with his staff, stood waiting in the sun till the gangplank was thrown out, when he stepped aboard. I went forward to meet him, and he kissed my hand. We four, that is, the Prince, the Prince of Wales, Princess Victoria, and myself, then entered a coach and drove through the streets, everywhere crowded with people and beautifully decorated with flags, to the railway station, the Emperor accompanying us on horseback.”