"See the many warriors mingling with the citizens,
Hiding their old laurels beneath the new myrtles,
For the first time forgetful of their conquests.
See the Frenchman, see the German,
Clasping each other's hand
And inviting you to the same festivals.
MEN AND WOMEN.
"Hear the voice resounding
From the banks of the Danube to the banks of the Seine;
Hear the voice that promises
A long reign to the happiness which this day brings."
Then was given the chorus from Iphigenia: "What grace, what majesty!" a chorus which Glück, said the Moniteur, "could not have made more beautiful, even if he had foreseen this occasion." Alas! the same thing had been said, in the same words, for the unhappy Marie Antoinette; but away with these gloomy presentiments! After the concert the discharge of a rocket from the palace gave the signal for the fireworks. These had been arranged for the whole length of the Avenue of the Champs Élysées. The illumination brought out the impressiveness of the vast architectural lines of the Tuileries. The main avenues of the gardens were richly decorated; around the flower-beds were one hundred and twenty-eight porticoes and twenty-eight arches from which hung transparencies and garlands; and at the entrance of this enchanted garden there was a graceful triumphal arch with twenty-four columns and eight pilasters illuminated with colored lanterns. The Place de la Concorde was surrounded by pyramids of fire and lights arranged to resemble orange-trees; the Champs Élysées, the Garde Meuble, the Temple of Glory, the Tuileries, the Palace of the Corps Législatif, were all ablaze. This last-named building, with a hastily constructed front to show how it was to be finished, represented on that occasion the Temple of Hymen. A transparency represented in front Peace blessing the August couple; on each side were genii carrying bucklers on which were to be seen the arms of the two Empires. Behind this group were magistrates, soldiers, and people, offering crowns, and at the ends of the transparency, the Seine and the Danube, surrounded with children, in token of fecundity. The twelve columns in front, the steps, the stone statues of Sully, of l'Hôpital, of Colbert, of d'Aguesseau, as well as those of Themis and Minerva, were most brilliant. The bridge Louis XV., leading from the Place de la Concorde to the Temple of Hymen, resembled a triumphal avenue with its double row of lights, its colored glass, its obelisks, its hundreds of blazing columns, each one topped by a star. The calmness of a lovely spring night was favorable to the illuminations; all Paris seemed a sea of flame with waves of fire.
The festival continued till late into the night. "All the happy families," says the Moniteur, "returned to their peaceful homes after a long absence. Every one had had the happiness of gazing at the Emperor and his August spouse, and all could feel that they too had been seen of them, so thoroughly did the feeling of the benevolence and affability with which their homage had been received by Their Majesties, repay the most enthusiastic testimonials of love and gratitude which a great nation has ever been able to present to its rulers."
Tuesday, April 3, was the day for the presentation at the Tuileries to the Emperor and Empress, seated on their throne, of the great bodies of the State. The Emperor replied to the address of the Senate in these words, "I and the Empress merit the sentiments which you express by the love we nourish for our people." The President of the deputation from the Kingdom of Italy spoke in Italian. "Our people of Italy," replied the Emperor, "know how much we love them. As soon as possible, I and the Empress wish to go to our good cities of Milan, Venice, and Bologna, to give new pledges of our love for our Italian people."
The thirteen Italian cardinals who were unwilling to be present at the wedding the day before were in the Hall of the Marshals, where, amid a throng of prelates, officers, functionaries, and court ladies, they were waiting for the moment to pass before their formidable master. They had been there for three hours, in great anxiety, when aides appeared, bidding them depart at once, the Emperor being unwilling to receive them. Much disconcerted, they made their way with difficulty through the crowd to their carriages. When the other cardinals, who had been present at the wedding, presented themselves in the throne-room, Napoleon stood up and violently denounced their expelled colleagues. Cardinal Consalvi, formerly Secretary of State to Pius VII., was especially attacked. "The others," he said, "may perhaps be excused on the score of their theological prejudices, but he has offended me from political motives. He is my enemy, and he seeks to revenge himself for my driving him from the ministry. That is why he has made this deep plot against me, raising against my dynasty a pretext of illegitimacy, a pretext which my enemies will be sure to lay hold of when my death shall have freed them from the fear that restrains them to-day." It was in vain that the offending thirteen cardinals wrote together an apologetic letter in which they said that they had never wished to judge the validity of the Emperor's first marriage or to throw any doubts on the lawfulness of the second. Napoleon remained implacable. He turned them out of their office, stripped them of their cardinals' robes, bade them resume their attire as simple priests, so that afterwards they were known as the black cardinals, in distinction from the others, the red cardinals. He deprived them of all their estates, ecclesiastic or inherited, and placed them under sequestration. He made them live in bands of two, in various cities of France, dependent on the charity of the faithful. The contest with the Pope began: but the Pope, though defeated in the beginning, was to conquer in the end, and the persecutor of one day was himself persecuted the next. The captive of Savona and of Fontainebleau was to re-enter the eternal city in triumph, and the all-powerful Emperor, the Pope's jailer, was to die, a prisoner of the English, on the rock of Saint Helena.
XV.
THE HONEYMOON.
Napoleon was happy; his new wife pleased him; he found that she was what he had wanted her to be,—gentle, kindly, timid, modest. It seemed sure that she would bring him heirs. Being neither ambitious nor prone to intrigue, she did not meddle with politics. She was religious, moral, and her principles were most sound. She would never oppose her husband, whose slightest wish she regarded as a command. She would appease his few stubborn foes of the French aristocracy, and put a stop to the last surviving backbiting of the Faubourg Saint Germain. As a bond of union between the past and the present, she brought not to France alone, but to all Europe, stability and repose, and rendered the foundations of the Imperial edifice firm and indestructible. The Emperor's marriage seemed his greatest triumph. For her part, Marie Louise was pleased with her new throne. Surrounded as she was by a chosen society, having in her service the proudest names of the French, the Belgian, the Italian nobility; flattered by the attention of a court in which elegance, wit, politeness, followed all the most brilliant traditions of the old régime, the daughter of the German Cæsars could not imagine that France, with its tranquillity, its profound respect, its affection for the monarchy, in which she was treated more like a goddess than a sovereign, had, a few years earlier, been governed by the Jacobins.