In April, 1805, taking Josephine with him, he crossed the Alps. Everywhere he was greeted with enthusiasm. On the field of Marengo he and Josephine sat upon a throne and viewed the splendid rehearsal of the battle in which the young hero had crushed Austria and rescued Italy at a blow. In May, 1805, he placed upon his head, amid pomps and ceremonies in the cathedral of Milan, the iron crown of the Lombards. Josephine looked on from the gallery; she was not crowned queen of Italy; but her son, the loyal and gallant Eugène Beauharnais, was made Viceroy of the new kingdom. His Holiness, the Pope, was not present at the ceremony; his Holiness was chagrined and unfriendly; he had left Paris a disappointed man; he had asked many favors of Napoleon, “my son in Christ Jesus,” which had been denied, and already was to be seen the slender line of the rift between Napoleon and the Papacy which was to grow and grow, widening year by year, until the yawning chasm was to ingulf much of the strength of the Empire. But, for the time being, the Pope went his way almost unnoticed, meekly implacable, humbly vindictive, waiting his chance to strike the ruler he had so recently oiled and blessed, while the vaulting Corsican, using an archbishop to manipulate the clerical machinery instead of a pope, inflated himself with pride as he felt upon his head the crown of Charlemagne. And had he no cause to be proud? Did the history of the world disclose a more dazzling record than his? Not born to the throne, a stranger to the purple and the gold of rank, the greatest Empire of modern times was his; and, as heir to the Cæsars, he had now caught upon his arms the grandeur and the glory of old Rome. Emperor of the West!--another Theodosius, another Charles the Great! And only a few years ago he had meekly stopped to scrape the mud of the streets off his coarse boots to avoid offence to the nose of Madame Permon: had pawned his watch for food; had moodily thought of drowning himself in the Seine because his mother had pleaded for help which he was too poor to give! If ever mortal was justly proud, it was he,--Napoleon, the penniless son of the lawyer; Napoleon, tireless student, unwearied worker, unconquerable adventurer, resistless soldier of Fortune,--Napoleon, Emperor of France and King of Italy, whose crowns had come to him unstained of blood! He was the strongest, the wisest, the best in fight, in work, in council; and they had raised him aloft on their bucklers as the strongest had been lifted in the valiant days of old.