[CHAPTER II]
Bonaparte's attempts at discovering poets—Luce de Lancival —Baour-Lormian—Lebrun-Pindare—Lucien Bonaparte, the author—Début of Mademoiselle Georges—The Abbé Geoffroy's critique—Prince Zappia—Hermione at Saint-Cloud
Let us here insert a word or two about Bonaparte's little Court. We are writing memoirs now, and not novels; we must therefore replace fiction by truth, plot by digressions and intrigue by desultory pages.
Oh! if only some man had left us information about the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such as I have attempted to leave about the nineteenth, how I should have blessed him, and what hard work he would have spared me!
A few words, therefore, as I have hinted, about Bonaparte and his little Court.
The début of Mademoiselle Georges had made a great sensation at Paris and at la Malmaison. Formerly, one would have said at Paris and at Versailles,—but Versailles was no more in 1802.
The First Consul and his family were greatly interested in literature at that time. Bonaparte's favourite poets were at the two extremes of art, Corneille and Ossian: Corneille as representative of the powers of the intellect, Ossian in the realms of imagination. So Corneille and Ossian took the most prominent place among the poets who figured in the catalogue of his Egyptian library. This partiality for the Scottish bard was so well known that Bourrienne, when he organised the library, guessed who was meant, though Bonaparte had written the word "Océan."