PARIS, August, 1805.
MY LORD:--I was particularly attentive in observing the countenances and
demeanour of the company at the last levee which Madame Napoleon
Bonaparte held, previous to her departure with her husband to meet the
Pope at Fontainebleau. I had heard from good authority that “to those
whose propensities were known, Duroc’s information that the Empress was
visible was accompanied with a kind of admonitory or courtly hint, that
the strictest decency in dress and manners, and a conversation chaste,
and rather of an unusually modest turn, would be highly agreeable to
their Sovereigns, in consideration of the solemn occasion of a Sovereign
Pontiff’s arrival in France,--an occurrence that had not happened for
centuries, and probably would not happen for centuries to come.” I went
early, and was well rewarded for my punctuality.
There came the Senator Fouche, handing his amiable and chaste spouse,
walking with as much gravity as formerly, when a friar, he marched in a
procession. Then presented themselves the Senators Sieyes and Roederer,
with an air as composed as if the former had still been an Abbe and the
confessor of the latter. Next came Madame Murat, whom three hours before
I had seen in the Bois de Boulogne in all the disgusting display of
fashionable nakedness, now clothed and covered to her chin. She was
followed by the pious Madame Le Clerc, now Princesse Borghese, who was
sighing deeply and loudly. After her came limping the godly Talleyrand,
dragging his pure moiety by his side, both with downcast and edifying
looks. The Christian patriots, Gravina and Lima, Dreyer and Beust,
Dalberg and Cetto, Malsburgh and Pappenheim, with the Catholic
Schimmelpenninck and Mohammed Said Halel Effendi,--all presented
themselves as penitent sinners imploring absolutions, after undergoing
mortifications.
But it would become tedious and merely a repetition, were I to depict
separately the figures and characters of all the personages at this
politico-comical masquerade. Their conversation was, however, more
uniform, more contemptible, and more laughable, than their accoutrements
and grimaces were ridiculous. To judge from what they said, they
belonged no longer to this world; all their thoughts were in heaven, and
they considered themselves either on the borders of eternity or on the
eve of the day of the Last Judgment. The truly devout Madame Napoleon
spoke with rapture of martyrs and miracles, of the Mass and of the
vespers, of Agnuses and relics of Christ her Saviour, and of Pius VII.,
His vicar. Had not her enthusiasm been interrupted by the enthusiastic
commentaries of her mother-in-law, I saw every mouth open ready to cry
out, as soon as she had finished, “Amen! Amen! Amen!”
Napoleon had placed himself between the old Cardinal de Bellois and the
not young Cardinal Bernier, so as to prevent the approach of any profane
sinner or unrepentant infidel. Round him and their clerical chiefs, all
the curates and grand vicars, almoners and chaplains of the Court, and
the capitals of the Princess, Princesses, and grand officers of State,
had formed a kind of cordon. “Had,” said the young General Kellerman to
me, “Bonaparte always been encompassed by troops of this description, he
might now have sung hymns as a saint in heaven, but he would never have
reigned as an Emperor upon earth.” This indiscreet remark was heard by
Louis Bonaparte, and on the next morning Kellerman received orders to
join the army in Hanover, where he was put under the command of a general
younger than himself. He would have been still more severely punished,
had not his father, the Senator (General Kellerman), been in so great
favour at the Court of St. Cloud, and so much protected by Duroc, who had
made, in 1792, his first campaign under this officer, then
commander-in-chief of the army of the Ardennes.
When this devout assembly separated, which was by courtesy an hour
earlier than usual, I expected every moment to hear a chorus of
horse-laughs, because I clearly perceived that all of them were tired of
their assumed parts, and, with me, inclined to be gay at the expense of
their neighbours. But they all remembered also that they were watched by
spies, and that an imprudent look or an indiscreet word, gaiety instead
of gravity, noise when silence was commanded, might be followed by an
airing in the wilderness of Cayenne. They, therefore, all called out,
“Coachman, to our hotel!” as if to say, “We will to-day, in compliment to
the new-born Christian zeal of our Sovereigns, finish our evening as
piously as we have begun it.” But no sooner were they out of sight of
the palace than they hurried to the scenes of dissipation, all
endeavouring, in the debauchery and excesses so natural to them, to
forget their unnatural affectation and hypocrisy.
Well you know the standard of the faith even of the members of the
Bonaparte family. Two days before this Christian circle at Madame
Napoleon’s, Madame de Chateaureine, with three other ladies, visited the
Princesse Borghese. Not seeing a favourite parrot they had often
previously admired, they inquired what was become of it.
“Oh, the poor creature!” answered the Princess; “I have disposed of it,
as well as of two of my monkeys. The Emperor has obliged me to engage an
almoner and two chaplains, and it would be too extravagant in me to keep
six useless animals in my hotel. I must now submit to hearing the
disgusting howlings of my almoner instead of the entertaining chat of my
parrot, and to see the awkward bows and kneelings of my chaplains instead
of the amusing capering of my monkeys. Add to this, that I am forced to
transform into a chapel my elegant and tasty boudoir, on the
ground-floor, where I have passed so many delicious tete-a-tetes. Alas!
what a change! what a shocking fashion, that we are now all again to be
Christians!”