"What delight," General de Ségur writes in his Memoirs concerning this trip, "What delight, what admiration was ours! Great must have been Napoleon's pride, judging from our own satisfaction which we received as old and trusted companions of so great a man!… I saw Cherbourg for the first time. This port, which Louis XVI. had designed simply for one of refuge, had been transformed by Napoleon into one from which an attack could be made. In those days of prodigies, however incapable of amazement I might have been, this roadstead, won by superhuman exertion from the ocean, this vast basin hewn to a depth of fifty feet in the granite, with accommodations for fifty men-of-war, for their building, for their repair, for their armament, filled me with an admiration such as I had felt at the first sight of the grandeur of the Alps."
The day after his arrival at Cherbourg, Napoleon rode out early, visited the heights about the town and inspected different ships. The next day he presided at several meetings and visited the works of the navy-yard; then he went down to the bottom of the basin hewn out of the rock, which was to contain the ships-of-the-line, and to be covered by the water to a depth of fifty-five feet. "During our stay," says M. de Bausset, "the Emperor wanted to breakfast on the dyke, or jetty, which had been begun in the unhappy reign of the most virtuous of kings. I got there before Their Majesties, on a most lovely day, and had everything arranged. The table was set in view of the sea; the English ships were plainly visible on the distant horizon; certainly they were far from suspecting Napoleon's presence. There was still a strong battery on the breakwater to protect the roadstead and the harbor. I do not think that our neighbors would have ventured to salute us at closer quarters, even if they had been better informed. At a signal from the Emperor the squadron lying in the roadstead, consisting of three large ships, under the command of Admiral Tronde, put out under full sail and passed in front of the jetty on which we were…. The Admiral's ship came up as close as it could; the Rear-Admiral came in his gig to fetch Their Majesties and their suite, and took us on board, amid the cheers of the crew, who were all in full uniform. While the Empress and her ladies were resting in the ward-room, Napoleon inspected the rest of the ship. Just when we least expected it, he ordered all the cannon to be fired together; never in my life did I hear such a noise: I thought that the ship was blowing up."
Napoleon and Marie Louise were back at Saint Cloud June 4, 1811. The Empress, then in the full flower of her beauty, and radiant with happiness, had responded to the profuse manifestations of public enthusiasm by her gracious reception of the authorities and the people of the departments.
It would be hard to imagine all the homage paid at this time to the Imperial pair. Dithyrambs upon the birth of the King of Rome were composed in every language of Europe except the English. There was a real avalanche of poems, odes, epistles; in less than a week the Emperor received more than two thousand of these tributes. Probably he read very few of these extravagant compositions, which were crammed panegyrics and allegories of the Greek mythology. The sum of one hundred thousand francs was divided among the authors of these official poems. "Of all these memorials, the most curious that flattery ever elevated," Madame Durand writes, "is a collection of French and Latin verses, entitled, 'The Marriage and the Birth,' which was printed at the Imperial press, and appointed by the University to be given as a prize to the pupils of the four grammar schools of Paris, and of those in the provinces, thereby assuring a ready sale. In this heap of trash figures the names of all the authors who, when the giant had fallen, insulted his remains and burned their incense before the new deity who took his place.
"As Béranger said about those poets:—
"They are, like the confectioners,
Friends of every baptism."
The Moniteur, in its number of June 9, 1811, the day of the King of Rome's baptism, spoke as follows: "The happy event which, at the moment of writing these lines, is throughout this vast Empire the object of the thanksgivings which a great people can offer to Heaven; which inspire songs of happiness in our temples, our public places, our peaceful cities, our fertile fields, and in the camps of our invincible warriors; which fulfils at once the wishes of the people for the happiness of their Sovereign, and those of the Sovereign for the firm establishment of the institutions he has consecrated to the prosperity of his people, ought more than any other to kindle the fervor of our poets and fill them with a lively and noble inspiration. Yet no one of them has been able to disguise the difficulty of his task; all have recognized that their greatest efforts would be required, not only to rise to the height of a subject of which its greatness is the first peril, but even to attune their lyre to the pitch of the enthusiasm that fires us, an enthusiasm of which the mighty voice, filling all France and heard in the remotest corner of Europe, is itself the grandest hymn of poetry and the most harmonious music. But no such obstacle has discouraged their muse; admiration, gratitude, love, furnish a happy inspiration, and our poets have felt it; they have faithfully transcribed the language of the populace in the language ascribed to the gods."
In proof of this we quote some of the verses inserted in the official organ:—
"Sion, rejoice! The voice of the prophets
Announces again the days of the Eternal One.
Before a young child, dear hope of Israel,
The cedars of Lebanon will bow their heads.
Of the oppressed he will become the support:
He will punish crime, and will brand vice;
His words will be the voice of justice,
And the Spirit of the Lord will march before him."
That is the Biblical style, which was used freely a few years later to celebrate the baptism of the Duke of Bordeaux. Mythology, too, was called in:—
"Do you see the leopard, weary of carnage,
Sated with blood, towards his savage lair
Run roaring?
Seized by an invincible, unknown terror,
He announces his death, and flees at the sight
Of a new-born Alcides."