The Tuileries, however, blazed with candles and jewels; the extravagance and heartburnings of a court began at once. Thanks to Ségur, the exterior at least was gorgeous. That the cup of the aristocracy might overflow, the clemency of the Empire was first displayed in the pardon of all the nobles who had been implicated with Georges. The Emperor's first journey was in July to his camp at Boulogne, where a distribution of decorations and the swearing of allegiance by the army were made the occasion of a second magnificent ceremonial. The ancient Frankish warriors were accustomed to set up their kings on a stage formed of their own bucklers. Napoleon received the acclamations of his troops seated in an iron chair, which was said to have been Dagobert's, and gazing over the sea towards the cliffs of Albion. On this notable journey, which was intended to have political as well as military significance, he was accompanied by Josephine. Her position was far from comfortable. As will be remembered, her husband when first in Italy had been disappointed in the expectation that she was soon to give him an heir, and her intrigues at Milan were the cause of frequent quarrels between them. Bonaparte had justified his public and scandalous association with a certain Mme. Fougé in Egypt by a suggestion that if he could but have a son he would marry the child's mother; the reconciliation of Brumaire was an act of expediency, and while it did a perfect work for the Consulate, the discussions which had been rife about the line of descent ever since the talk of empire had become general showed the instability of the relation between the imperial pair; even the formal regulations of the new constitution had inspired little confidence in the Beauharnais party. The new Empress, therefore, was the embodiment of meekness, but for the present she was, according to the old Roman formula, "Caia" where her husband was "Caius." Side by side, and apparently in perfect amity, they proceeded from Boulogne to Aachen, the ancient capital of Charles the Great, on the German frontier. As if to mock the Roman and German claims of Francis, Napoleon and his consort held high court in that historic town, whose memories were redolent of European sway, and whose walls had been the bulwarks of that medieval Roman empire which, though itself an ineffective anachronism, was about to be renewed in modern guise. The dukes, princes, and kings of Germany, either in person or by their ambassadors, came to do homage; even Austria had a representative. Constantine had made a capital for his reunited empire by building a new Rome on the banks of the Bosporus; Paris and France could see how easily Napoleon might adopt a similar policy. They did observe, and not without dismay.