The Emperor got out of his litter and entered Paris mounted on a black horse richly caparisoned with the arms of France, sent him by the King his nephew, who came out to meet him mounted on a tall white charger wearing a scarlet robe, mantle and hat covered with pearls, with a great train of nobles and chevaliers gorgeously dressed attended by their followers wearing their liveries, the officers of the households of the King and the Dauphin in immense numbers dressed according to their grades. The King had sent a proclamation the day before that no one should dare (_que nul ne fust tant hardi_) to take up the space in the _grant rue_ by coming to the palace with carts or people, and no one should move from the places where they had put themselves to see the King and Emperor pass. None were allowed to come into the town, and many of the inhabitants had to stay outside in the fields, while sergeants-at-arms were posted in the streets, and thirty of them with swords and maces rode before the King’s bodyguard. The King of France, the Emperor and the King of the Romans rode into Paris side by side in this magnificent procession, and it was three o’clock when they arrived at the marble steps of the palace, when the Emperor, who could hardly hold himself up from the gout, was placed in a chair covered with cloth of gold and with much honour and ceremony conducted to the apartment prepared for him.
It would be too long in a work like this to give the details so minutely described and so interesting to the student of history, of the proceedings of the next few days, during which the Emperor remained the guest of the King of France, of the banquets with five dais one above another in great halls where windows, ceiling, and columns were hung with cloth of gold, of the profusion of the feasting, of the _spectacle_ of the conquest of Jerusalem in the vast hall of the Palais de la Cité, of the entertainments at the Louvre, Beauté and Vincennes, offered by the King to the Emperor. It will be sufficient to relate what is perhaps the most interesting event of his sojourn in Paris, his visit to the Queen at the hôtel St. Paul on Sunday, January 10th. The Emperor, accompanied by the King of France, went down to the quay near the Louvre, where they embarked on the King’s barge and proceeded by water to St. Pol, where they landed. They were met in the middle of the court by the Dauphin and his brother Louis Comte de Valois, who knelt before the King and then went to salute the Emperor. The latter took off his hat, kissed the two boys, and was carried on in his chair through such a throng of seigneurs, knights, and people of the Court that the chair could hardly pass, to the _salon_ of the Queen, who was in the midst of a great assemblage of princesses and ladies of the court. As he sat by the Queen the Emperor kept asking for her mother, the Duchesse de Bourbon, Isabelle de Valois, the sister of his first wife and friend of his sister Bonne, Duchesse de Normandie, whom he had known so well in the old days at Paris and Vincennes. She had withdrawn to the end of the great room out of the crowd, but when she was told that he was anxious to see her she came up to him.