The first set of Imperial coaches, with six horses each and outriders, thereupon came by. They carried mostly State magnificos and grandees of exalted position at Court. Coach after coach went slowly past at a dignified pace: eight--nine--ten--eleven--conveyances, all spick and span with new gilding and varnish. The twelfth coach, beside which rode a bevy of smart equerries, held the Princesses of the Bonaparte family: five grown-up ladies and the little daughter of Princess Louis. It was rather a tight squeeze, for the five Imperial Highnesses were plump and bulky persons, and had to be wedged closely; they brought with them too, each lady, several yards of train, brocaded stuff with stiff edging of gilt-gimp, and thick purple and emerald green velvet mantling, which had all to be got in and kept from crumpling as much as possible! What they said to one another has not been recorded--they were usually free-spoken women with comments for most things ready to their tongues, like other daughters of the Revolution. At any rate this is known. They were in white silk dresses, low necked, and, in spite of their close packing, shivered with the cold, which they felt bitterly. “We were all,” related a Lady of Honour elsewhere in the procession, “thinly dressed, as for a heated ball-room, and had only thin Cashmere shawls to keep our shoulders warm with.” Then came more soldiers. The immediate escort of the Emperor now appeared. Sitting erect and stiff in their saddles, the Carabiniers rode up--the senior cavalry regiment of France--eight hundred picked horsemen uniformed in Imperial blue and crimson and gold, with helmets of burnished brass, over which nodded thick tufted crests of crimson wool. The officers, superb beings adorned with breastplates of gleaming brass, led the regiment. The Carabiniers claimed to be the only corps of the Napoleonic Army which could prove continuity with the Old Royal Army, if not indeed with the historic “Maison du Roi” itself, the Household Brigade of the Monarchy, owing to a curious oversight at the Revolution through which the regiment had escaped dispersal. Then came the Man of the Hour. [Sidenote: THE IMPERIAL COACH APPEARS] Napoleon now appeared, in his brand-new Imperial State coach. Eight noble bays drew it--with harness and trappings of red morocco leather studded with golden bees. A marvellous vehicle to look at was Napoleon’s coach, gleaming all over with gilded carved work; its roof topped by a great golden crown, modelled “after that of Charlemagne,” as people told one another, upheld by four glistening gilded eagles. The State coach sparkled all over, looking as if encrusted with gold; a gleaming mass of carved and gilded decorations, representing allegorical emblems, heraldic designs, and coats of arms in colour.