ladies-in-waiting of the Princesses, the ladies and officers of Their Imperial Highnesses on duty. When the procession had taken their places according to their rank, the Grand Almoner intoned the _Veni Creator_, and the governess having carried the child to the railing of the choir, he went through the preliminary rites, and then took place the baptism. As soon as the Imperial child had been baptized, the governess placed him in the hands of the Empress; the First Herald-at-Arms advanced to the middle of the choir and called out three times, "Long live the King of Rome!" Cheers and applause, which till that moment had been restrained by the sanctity of the ceremony and the solemnity of the place, then broke forth on all sides. While they lasted, Marie Louise stood with the child in her arms; the Emperor then took him and held him aloft, that all might see him. Thiers thus comments in a page of real eloquence on this imposing spectacle: "What a solemn mystery surrounds human life! What a painful surprise it would have been, if beyond this scene of power and greatness, one could have seen the ruin, the blood, the flames of Moscow, the ice of the Beresina and Leipsic, Fontainebleau, Elba, Saint Helena, and finally the death of this prince at the age of twenty, in exile, without one of the crowns he wore that day upon his head, and the many revolutions once more to raise his family after overthrowing it! What a blessing that the future is hidden from man! But what a stumbling-block for his prudence, charged to conjecture the morrow and to guard against it with all one's wisdom." When the governess had again taken the Prince, she courtesied to the Emperor, and the King of Rome, with his retinue, left the church, to be taken to the Archbishop's, whence he returned to the Tuileries. Then the Grand Almoner intoned the _Te Deum_, which, was performed by the choir, and followed by the _Domine, fac salvum imperatorem_. The Emperor and the Empress were conducted with the same ceremonies as at their entrance, to the church door, where they got into their carriage amid the cheers of the crowd, and drove to the entertainment at the Hôtel de Ville. "The people of Paris admitted to this festivity," says Thiers, "were able to see Napoleon at table, his crown on his head, surrounded by the kings of his family and a number of foreign princes, eating in public, like the old Germanic Emperors, the successors of the Emperors of the West. The Parisians applauded in their delight at this brilliant spectacle, imagining that durability was united with grandeur and with glory! They did well to rejoice, for these joys were the last of the reign. Henceforth our story is but one long lamentation."