then staggered back several steps, his face flushed, as his people continued to cry out his name. The speech had left him exhausted. But only for a moment, for he almost instantly collected himself and raced forward again to the foot of the altar, where he basked once more in the ovation.
Napoleon gave this legendary speech in the afternoon on Coronation Day. Outside the church, white clouds dotted the endless blue sky, and the sun shone down over Notre-Dame. How much the weather had altered since the early morning! The gargoyles and flying buttresses and statues glinted in the sunlight, and it was this flickering radiance which could be seen from many feet above the cathedral. Higher and higher in the air though, the gargoyles became indistinct, as the outline of the cathedral itself absorbed the lunging monsters into its borders. Notre-Dame now appeared as no more than a simple crucifix, a shape which had been so integral to the church’s original design plans, but which was nevertheless so easily overlooked even by routine churchgoers without the benefit of a bird’s eye view. Wispy white clouds passed over the cross-shaped church, obscuring it momentarily, and then releasing it again into full vantage. One could only climb higher though, and before long the great Notre-Dame had become truly tiny, indeed, all but invisible, no larger than a 5 franc piece hastily dropped somewhere on the Pont au Change. What remained was the blue-green Seine, passing quickly through the city, before rushing into the endless pastures, farms, and golden fields in which it was much more at home. From this view, the truly irregular shape of the Seine could be realized. Only nature would create something as circuitous and nonsensical in appearance as the Seine River, whose ungraceful body could generally only be detected from the top of the sky. Now the church was completely lost, completely unidentifiable, perhaps it was not even there at all.
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