Napoleon’s head coachman of the Consulate days, César, sat on the box, his fat form embedded in the centre of a luxurious hammer-cloth of scarlet velvet, spangled over with golden bees. Outriders in green and gold and walking footmen beside the horses added their part; also half a score of Pages of Honour, hanging on all round at the sides and back of the coach, in green velvet coats, gold laced down the seams, with green silk shoulder-knots, scarlet silk breeches and stockings, and white ostrich-plumes in their jaunty black velvet hats: most of the lads future officers of the Guard. At either side rode Equerries and _Officiers d’Ordonnance_, in white and gold or pale blue and silver. To the crowds that lined the streets the State coach was a sight of the day--the coach, for some, as much as the Emperor. All Paris, of course, had not been able to find room round the Field of Mars, spacious as the accommodation there was. The pavements all along the streets from the Tuileries were packed with a dense crowd, which pressed everywhere close up behind the double rows of Gendarmes and Imperial Guardsmen keeping the processional route. They shouted “Vive l’Empereur!” lustily, for all had a good view of Napoleon through the great glass windows of the coach; seated inside on the right, wearing his ostrich-feathered cap of semi-State, a gold embroidered purple velvet mantle, and the Grand Master’s collar of the Legion of Honour, sparkling with costly gems. Josephine, a slender figure in ermine cloak and white silk dress, sat on Napoleon’s left, and on the front seats sat Joseph and Louis, side by side--the elder brother sleek and smiling, wrapped up in a poppy-red cloak as Grand Elector of the Empire; Louis Bonaparte wearing his blue velvet Constable’s mantle over the brass breastplate of the Colonel-in-Chief of the Carabiniers, to which rank Napoleon had specially promoted Louis, with the idea of maintaining an old tradition of the Monarchy that the titular Commander of the Carabiniers should always be a Prince of the Blood, “_Frère du Roi_.” [Sidenote: CHIEFS OF THE “MAISON MILITAIRE”] Napoleon’s Imperial Standard was borne immediately after the State coach; a crowned eagle heading the staff; the flag a silken tricolor, richly fringed with gold and bespangled with golden bees.