When she had appeared at Peterhof before the Emperor Alexander, before his brothers Constantine, Nicolas and Michel, before the reigning empress and the dowager empress, Mademoiselle Georges, preceded by the reputation of her great fame, appeared at the theatre in St. Petersburg. It goes without saying that at the theatre of St. Petersburg the orthodox style of drama was in vogue. Alexander might carry off Napoleon's actors; but, alas! he could not carry away his poets: poets were too rare in France for Napoleon not to keep an eye on those he possessed. Chateaubriand and Madame de Staël, the two great poets of the time, travelled abroad much; but they were not dramatic poets.
So Mérope, Sémiramis, Phèdre, Iphigénie and Andromaque were played in St. Petersburg, with more pertinacity even than they were in Paris. Nevertheless, if literature lagged behind, politics, at all events, kept to the front.
Napoleon conquered Prussia in a score of days: he dated his decree concerning the Continental blockade from Berlin, and made his brother Jérôme, King of Westphalia, his brother Joseph, King of Spain, his brother Louis, King of Holland, his brother-in-law Murat, King of Naples, his son-in-law Eugène, Viceroy of Italy. In exchange, he deposed an empress. Joséphine, relegated to Malmaison, had yielded her position to Marie-Louise. The great conqueror, the wonderful strategist, the superb politician, had not realised that, whenever a King of France joined hands with Austria, misfortune dogged his footsteps. Be that as it may, the terrible future was still hidden behind the golden clouds of hope. On 20 March 1811, Marie-Louise gave birth, in the presence of twenty-three persons, to a child upon whose fair head his father placed the crown which, nineteen centuries before, Antony had offered to Cæsar.
Europe at this period had, after the fashion of the Northern oceans, a few days of calm between two gigantic storms, on which it could think of poetry. During one of these days of calm the Emperor Napoleon gave a reception at Erfürt to all the crowned heads of Europe. His old and faithful friend, the King of Saxony, lent his kingdom for this sumptuous entertainment.
Napoleon invited the kings and queens of art as well as the kings and queens of this world. Princes crowned with golden or bay crowns, princesses crowned with diamonds or with roses, flocked to the rendezvous.
On 28 September 1808, Cinna was performed before the Emperor Napoleon, the Emperor Alexander and the King of Saxony. On the following day, the 29th, Britannicus was played. In that interval of twenty-four hours, the august assembly was increased by Prince William of Prussia, Duke William of Bavaria and Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, who, later, was to lose three crowns at one fell blow, through the death of his wife, the Princess Royal of England, and the child which, mother-like, she took away to the grave with her: with them, he lost that famous trident of Neptune which Lemierre called the sceptre of the world.
On 2 October, Goethe arrived upon the scene. He had the right to present himself: of all the names of princes we have just mentioned (without wishing to hurt the feelings of the gentlemen of the rue de Grenelle) the name of the author of Faust is perhaps the only one which will survive.
On the 3rd, Philoctète was played. It was during this performance that Alexander held out his hand to Napoleon at the line—
"L'amitié d'un grand homme est un bienfait des dieux!"