THE DYNASTS ACT v
CARDINAL GRAND ALMONERS. They take their seats under the canopy, and the train of notabilities seat themselves farther back, the persons-in-waiting stopping behind the Imperial chairs.
The ceremony of the religious marriage now begins. Therchoyr intones a hymn, the EMPEROR and EMPRESS go to the altaf, remove their gloves, and make their vows.
SPIRIT IRONIC
The English Church should return thanks for this wedding, seeing how it will purge of coarseness the picture-sheets of that artistic nation^ which will hardly be able to caricature the new wife as it did poor plebeian Josephine. Such starched and ironed monarchists cannot sneer at a woman of such a divinely dry and crusted line as the Hapsburgs !
Mass is next celebrated, after which the TE DEUM is chanted in harmonies that whirl round the walls of the Salon-Carr£ and quiver down the long Gallery. The procession then re-forms and returns, amid the flutterings and applause of the dense assembly. But Napoleon's face has not lost the sombre expression which settled on it. The pair and their train pass out by the west door, and the congregation disperses in the other direction, the cloud-curtain closing over the scene as they disappear.
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