Saints, prophets, kings, and queens, in stone, high up in the galleries of the exterior of the cathedral, looked down approvingly, or the reverse, upon the rare show and its spectators. The gargoyles of Reims were ever famous for their unusual benignity. They were all animation and sparkled in the sunshine; merriment became emphatic within the floriated arches of the buttresses. In each a laughing angel in stone was exercising her witchery and adding heavenly hilarity to the general good-humour. The whole sacred building was _en fête_; it is still the merriest building in Christendom; its sculptured stones have imbibed the effervescence of rare champagne for centuries! Within the sacred building all was solemn and restrained. Resplendent gem-like glass of the thirteenth century, skilfully leaded in the clerestory windows of the nave, produced a chiaroscuro of scintillating coloured light, wherein the spirits of the mighty and the beauteous dead were mustering to take, unseen, their sympathetic parts in the gorgeous functions of the day. Freshly-worked tapestries, covering the aisle walls, shared with the vitreous glories the telling of pageant stories of religion and romance. The “_Sacré_,” or coronation, of King Charles was an unique ceremonial. Supported upon either hand by the most distinguished Sovereign Princes of France,--Louis III., King of Sicily and Duke of Anjou, and his brother René, Duke of Barrois and heir-consort of Lorraine,--he passed majestically up the nave under the heavy golden canopy of state. Another Anjou Prince, Charles, Duke of Maine, nephew of Louis and René, bore the monarch’s train--his cousins all. The Grand Peers, with one exception, Burgundy, marched alongside in sovereign dignity and pride. Strange it was that no royal ladies graced the auspicious sacring. Queen Marie bore no part; she, indeed, remained at Bourges, and recited her “Hours” in solitude. Neither Queen Yolande of Sicily-Anjou nor Duchess Isabelle of Bar-Lorraine was present, but the place of First Lady was, for all that, occupied by a “Queen,” _the_ Queen of the coronation--“_la Royne blanche--Jeanne_.” Such a “Queen” had never stood beside a Sovereign kneeling for his crown before the high-altar of Reims. The fabled fame of saintly Queen Clotilde paled before the brilliant triumph of plain Jeanne d’Arc. How she bore herself in this her hour of miraculous victory, and what part she took in the stately ceremonial, historians have scantily related, and painters only imaginatively recorded: no précis has come down to us, no artist made a sketch upon the spot.