The Court of the Empress Josephine

by Imbert de Saint-Amand

Alas! this splendid Fontainebleau, the gorgeous palace where Pope and Emperor were then living in triumph, was later to be to both an accursed spot. The Pope was to return to it a prisoner, maltreated though old, though a priest, though the Vicar of Christ, and there the Emperor was to drink the cup of humiliation, of despair, to the dregs. It was there that, conquered, broken, betrayed by fortune, he was to sign his abdication. It was there that he was to utter those heart-rending words: "It is right; I receive what I have deserved. I wanted no statues, for I knew that there was no safety in receiving them at any other hands than those of posterity. A man to keep them while he lives, needs constant good fortune. I think of France, which it is terrible to leave in this state, without frontiers when it had such wide ones!—that is the bitterest of the humiliations that overwhelm me. To leave France so small when I wished to make it so great!" It was there that, overcome by immeasurable grief, the conqueror of so many battles wished to seek in suicide a refuge from the tortures of thought, and that he was to fail to find death, he who on the battle-field had squandered so many lives. O mortals, ignorant of your own fates, how happy you are not to have foreknowledge of them!

IV.

THE PREPARATIONS FOR THE CORONATION.

The Empress left Fontainebleau, Thursday, November 29, 1804, in company with Madame de La Rochefoucauld, Maid of Honor, and Madame d'Arberg, Lady of the Palace, and reached Paris the same day, a few hours before the Emperor and the Pope, who left Fontainebleau in the same carriage and entered the Tuileries at eight in the evening. A platoon of Mamelukes escorted the Imperial carriage, and it was a singular sight to see the Mussulman escorting the Vicar of Christ. The Pope was installed at the Tuileries in the Pavilion of Flora. There were attached to his person M. de Viry, the Emperor's Chamberlain; M. de Luçay, Prefect of the Palace, and Colonel Durosnel, Equerry.

All Paris was excited by the approach of the great event. The hotels were crowded; the population of the capital was nearly doubled, so vast was the throng of provincials and foreigners. Tradesmen were working night and day to prepare the dresses and uniforms. In every workshop there was unparalleled activity. Leroy, who previously had been only a milliner, had decided for this occasion to undertake dressmaking, and had made Madame Raimbault, a celebrated dressmaker of the time, his partner. From their shop came the magnificent robes to be worn by the Empress on Coronation Day. Her jewels, consisting of a crown, a diadem, and a girdle, were the work of the jeweller Margueritte. The crown was formed of eight branches meeting under a gold globe surmounted by a cross. The branches were set with diamonds, four in the shape of a palm leaf, four in the shape of a myrtle leaf. Around the curve was a ribbon, inlaid with eight enormous emeralds. The frontlet was bright with amethysts. The diadem was formed of four rows of pearls interlaced with diamond leaves, with many large brilliants, one alone weighing one hundred and forty-nine grains. The girdle was a gold band, enriched with thirty-nine pink gems. The Emperor's sceptre had been made by Odiot; it was of solid silver, enlaced by a gold serpent, and surmounted by a globe on which was a miniature figure of Charlemagne seated. The hand of justice, the crown, and the sword came from the workshops of Biennais. The dress of the courtiers was to be very magnificent; it consisted of a French coat of different colors according to the duties of the wearer under the Grand Marshal, the High Chamberlain, and the Grand Equerry, with silver embroidery for all; a cloak worn over one shoulder, of velvet, lined with satin: a scarf, a lace band, and the hat caught up in front, and adorned with a feather. The women were to appear in ball dress, with a train, with a collar of blond-lace, called a chérusque, which was fastened on both shoulders and rose high behind the head, recalling the fashions of the time of Catherine de' Medici.

There were rehearsals of the coronation as if it were a spectacular play. Every one, from the principal actors to the most insignificant assistants, studied his part most conscientiously; the Masters of Ceremonies were to act as prompters to those who might forget. The Imperial carriages and those of the Princes and Princesses one morning were all driven empty to the neighborhood of Notre Dame, that coachman, postilions, and grooms might know the route they were to take, and when they were to draw up. The carriages were superb, the horses magnificent, the liveries sumptuous. Never in the most extravagant days of the monarchy had such luxury been seen.

M. de Bausset says that a week before the coronation the Emperor commanded of the artist Isabey seven drawings representing the seven principal ceremonies to take place at Notre Dame, which, however, could not be rehearsed in the Cathedral on account of the number of workmen busy day and night in decorating it. To ask at once for seven drawings each containing more than a hundred persons in action, was asking for the impossible. Isabey skilfully eluded the difficulty. He bought at the toy shops all the little dolls he could find, dressed them up as Pope, Emperor, Empress, Princes, high dignitaries, Chamberlains, Equerries, Ladies of Honor, Ladies of the Palace, These dolls thus arrayed he arranged on a plan in relief of the Interior of Notre Dame, and carrying it to the Emperor, said: "Sire, I bring Your Majesty something better than the drawings." Napoleon thought the idea ingenious, and used the dolls and the plan to make every official understand his place and his duty.

The Moniteur of the 9th Brumaire, Year XIII, (November 30, 1804), published in advance all the details of the ceremony, which the Emperor had fixed with as much care as if it had been the plan of a battle. A difficulty arose on this occasion. The Pope had wished Napoleon to receive the holy communion in public on the day of the coronation, and Napoleon had given the matter thought. The Grand Master of Ceremonies, M. de Ségur, brought up against the proposition the necessity of a preliminary confession and the possibility that absolution might be denied him. "That's not the difficulty," said the Emperor, "the Holy Father knows how to distinguish between the sins of Caesar and those of the man," Then he added: "I know that I ought to give an example of respect for religion and its ministers; so you see that I treat the priests well, go regularly to mass, and listen to it with all due seriousness and solemnity. But every one knows me, and how would it be for me, and for others, if I should go too far? Would not that be setting an example of hypocrisy, and committing a sacrilege?" The Pope did not insist upon it. This dread of committing sacrilege Napoleon referred to again at Saint Helena, in 1816: "Everything was done," he said then, "to persuade me to go in great pomp to communion at Notre Dame, after the fashion of our kings; I absolutely refused; I did not believe enough, I said, to get any good from it, and yet I believed too much to consent to be guilty of sacrilege."

Another difficulty which gave the Pope much anxiety, and was not settled in the formalities of the coronation, was whether the Emperor should receive the crown from the hands of the Sovereign Pontiff. Pius VII. had brought up the question before leaving Rome, and Cardinal Consalvi had written on this matter, to which the Vatican attached great importance, as follows: "All the French Emperors, all those of Germany, who have been crowned by the Popes, have accepted the crown from them. The Holy Father, before undertaking this journey, requires to receive from Paris the assurance that there will be no innovation made in the present case, in the way of a diminution of the honor and dignity of the Sovereign Pontiff." At Rome only vague and dilatory answers had been received. In Paris the Emperor, leaving the matter to be decided on the spur of the moment, had only said: "I will arrange that myself."

The preparations at Notre Dame had come to an end. They had been very considerable. Several houses that hid the north façade had been destroyed. Before the great entrance, still scarred by the ravages of the Revolutionists, there had been set up a decoration of painted wood, representing a vast Gothic porch with three arches upholding the statues of the thirty-six good cities, the mayors of which were to be present at the coronation. To the right and the left stood images of Clovis and Charlemagne, sceptre in hand. Above, between two golden eagles, appeared the Imperial coat-of-arms. This was intended for the sole entrance of the Pope and the Emperor. It was connected with the Archbishop's palace by large, covered, wooden galleries, adorned within by gobelin tapestry. This palace, to which Pius VII. and Napoleon were to go before they entered the Cathedral, no longer exists; it was destroyed, February 14, 1831, in an insurrection. It used to stand just by the side of the church. It was built in 1161 by Maurice de Sully, rebuilt in 1697 by the Cardinal of Noailles, embellished in 1750 by the Archbishop de Beaumont, and was the meeting-place of the Constituent Assembly from October 19 to November 9, 1789. There the Pope and the Emperor were to alight on their way from the Tuileries and put on their grand coronation robes before entering the Cathedral.