PARIS, August, 1805.
MY LORD:--You have perhaps heard that Napoleon Bonaparte, with all his
brothers and sisters, was last Christmas married by the Pope according to
the Roman Catholic rite, being previously only united according to the
municipal laws of the French Republic, which consider marriage only as a
civil contract. During the last two months of His Holiness’s residence
here, hardly a day passed that he was not petitioned to perform the same
ceremony for our conscientious grand functionaries and courtiers, which
he, however, according to the Emperor’s desire, declined. But his
Cardinals were not under the same restrictions, and to an attentive
observer who has watched the progress of the Revolution and not lost
sight of its actors, nothing could appear more ridiculous, nothing could
inspire more contempt of our versatility and inconsistency, than to
remark among the foremost to demand the nuptial benediction, a
Talleyrand, a Fouche, a Real, an Augereau, a Chaptal, a Reubel, a Lasnes,
a Bessieres, a Thuriot, a Treilhard, a Merlin, with a hundred other
equally notorious revolutionists, who were, twelve or fifteen years ago,
not only the first to declaim against religious ceremonies as ridiculous,
but against religion itself as useless, whose motives produced, and whose
votes sanctioned, those decrees of the legislature which proscribed the
worship, together with its priests and sectaries. But then the fashion of
barefaced infidelity was as much the order of the day as that of external
sanctity is at present. I leave to casuists the decision whether to the
morals of the people, naked atheism, exposed with all its deformities, is
more or less hurtful than concealed atheism, covered with the garb of
piety; but for my part I think the noonday murderer less guilty and much
less detestable than the midnight assassin who stabs in the dark.
A hundred anecdotes are daily related of our new saints and fashionable
devotees. They would be laughable were they not scandalous, and
contemptible did they not add duplicity to our other vices.
Bonaparte and his wife go now every morning to hear Mass, and on every
Sunday or holiday they regularly attend at vespers, when, of course, all
those who wish to be distinguished for their piety or rewarded for their
flattery never neglect to be present. In the evening of last Christmas
Day, the Imperial chapel was, as usual, early crowded in expectation of
Their Majesties, when the chamberlain, Salmatoris, entered, and said to
the captain of the guard, loud enough to be heard by the audience, “The
Emperor and the Empress have just resolved not to come here to-night, His
Majesty being engaged by some unexpected business, and the Empress not
wishing to come without her consort.” In ten minutes the chapel was
emptied of every person but the guards, the priests, and three old women
who had nowhere else to pass an hour. At the arrival of our Sovereigns,
they were astonished at the unusual vacancy, and indignantly regarded
each other. After vespers were over, one of Bonaparte’s spies informed
him of the cause, when, instead of punishing the despicable and
hypocritical courtiers, or showing them any signs of his displeasure, he
ordered Salmatoris under arrest, who would have experienced a complete
disgrace had not his friend Duroc interfered and made his peace.
At another time, on a Sunday, Fouche entered the chapel in the midst of
the service, and whispered to Bonaparte, who immediately beckoned to his
lord-in-waiting and to Duroc. These both left the Imperial chapel, and
returning in a few minutes at the head of five grenadiers, entered the
grand gallery, generally frequented by the most scrupulous devotees, and
seized every book. The cause of this domiciliary visit was an anonymous
communication received by the Minister of Police, stating that libels
against the Imperial family, bound in the form of Prayer-books, had been
placed there. No such libels were, however, found; but of one hundred
and sixty pretended breviaries, twenty-eight were volumes of novels,
sixteen were poems, and eleven were indecent books. It is not necessary
to add that the proprietors of these edifying works never reclaimed them.
The opinions are divided here, whether this curious discovery originated
in the malice of Fouche, or whether Talleyrand took this method of duping
his rival, and at the same time of gratifying his own malignity. Certain
it is that Fouche was severely reprimanded for the transaction, and that
Bonaparte was highly offended at the disclosure.
The common people, and the middle classes, are neither so ostentatiously
devout, nor so basely perverse. They go to church as to the play, to
gape at others, or to be stared at themselves; to pass the time, and to
admire the show; and they do not conceal that such is the object of their
attendance. Their indifference about futurity equals their ignorance of
religious duties. Our revolutionary charlatans have as much brutalized
their understanding as corrupted their hearts. They heard the Grand Mass
said by the Pope with the same feelings as they formerly heard
Robespierre proclaim himself a high priest of a Supreme Being; and they
looked at the Imperial processions with the same insensibility as they
once saw the daily caravans of victims passing for execution.
Even in Bonaparte’s own guard, and among the officers of his household
troops, several examples of rigour were necessary before they would go to
any place of worship, or suffer in their corps any almoners; but now,
after being drilled into a belief of Christianity, they march to the Mass
as to a parade or to a review. With any other people, Bonaparte would
not so easily have changed in two years the customs of twelve, and forced
military men to kneel before priests, whom they but the other day were
encouraged to hunt and massacre like wild beasts.
On the day of the Assumption of the Holy Virgin, a company of gendarmes
d’Elite, headed by their officers, received publicly, and by orders, the
sacrament; when the Abbe Frelaud approached Lieutenant Ledoux, he fell
into convulsions, and was carried into the sacristy. After being a
little recovered, he looked round him, as if afraid that some one would
injure him, and said to the Grand Vicar Clauset, who inquired the cause
of his accident and terror: “Good God! that man who gave me, on the 2d of
September, 1792, in the convent of the Carenes, the five wounds from
which I still suffer, is now an officer, and was about to receive the
sacrament from my hands.” When this occurrence was reported to
Bonaparte, Ledoux was dismissed; but Abbe Frelaud was transported, and
the Grand Vicar Clauset sent to the Temple, for the scandal their
indiscretion had caused. This act was certainly as unjust towards him
who was bayoneted at the altar, as towards those who served the altar
under the protection of the bayonets.