Pardon me, Monsieur Bertin, to which Marcus Aurelius do you refer? Is it the one to whom you recently compared Napoleon, or some other Marcus Aurelius with whom we are unacquainted? Ah! Monsieur Bertin, you are like Titus: you have not wasted your day, or rather your night! We will relate what happened during the night in which Monsieur Bertin worked so energetically, and in the course of which the serpent changed his tricoloured skin for a white skin and the Journal de l'Empire became the Journal des Débats. It has to be admitted, however, that during the night of 20-21 March 1815 you resumed your old tricoloured skin which you had sold Monsieur Bertin, but which you had not delivered up.
Now let us pass on to the Journal de Paris. "It is a good thing to know," quoth the Journal de Paris, "that Bonaparte's name is not Napoleon, but Nicolas."
Really, Mr. Editor, what an excessively sublime apotheosis you make of yesterday's poor emperor! Instead of showing base ingratitude, like your contemporary, you flatter outrageously. Bonaparte did no more than presume to call himself Napoléon,—that is, the lion of the desert,—and here you make him Nicolas, which means Conqueror of the peoples. Ah! my dear Mr. Editor, if your Journal de Paris had been a literary paper, like the Journal des Débats, you would have known Greek like your confrère—that is to say, like an inhabitant, and you would not have made such blunders. But you did not know Greek. Let us see if you are better acquainted with French. We will complete the quotation.
"It is a good thing to know that Bonaparte's name is not Napoléon, but Nicolas; not Bonaparte, but Buonaparte; he cut out the U in order to connect himself with a distinguished family of that name."
"You know that the Balzacs of Entraigues make out that you do not belong to their family," said someone once to M. Honoré de Balzac, the author of Père Goriot and of les Parents pauvres.
"If I do not belong to their family," retorted M. Honoré de Balzac, "so much the worse for them!"
We will return to the Journal de Paris, and let it have its say:—
"Many people have amused themselves by making different anagrams from the name of Buonaparte by taking away the U. The following seems to us to depict that personage the best: NABOT PARÉ."[1]
What a misfortune, Mr. Editor, that in order to arrive at such a delightful conclusion you have been obliged to sacrifice your U, like the tyrant himself!
Now, as a sequel to the verses in the Journal des Débats, we must quote some lines from the Journal de Paris; they only amount to a single strophe, but it alone, in the eyes of all lovers of poetry, is fully equal to three. Besides, these lines are of great importance: M. de Maubreuil actually waxes prophetic in the last line.