Matters legal and ceremonial were now approaching completion for the coronation. Negotiations had been proceeding between the Tuileries and the Vatican, Napoleon begging and indeed requiring the presence of the Pope on that occasion. Pius VII. was troubled at the thought of crowning the murderer of the Duc d'Enghien; but he was scarcely his own master, and the dextrous hints of Napoleon that religion would benefit if he were present at Notre Dame seem to have overcome his first scruples, besides quickening the hope of recovering the north of his States. He was to be disappointed in more ways than one. Religion was to benefit only from the enhanced prestige given to her rites in the coming ceremony, not in the practical way that the Pope desired. And yet it was of the first importance for Napoleon to receive the holy oil and the papal blessing, for only so could he hope to wean the affections of royalists from their uncrowned and exiled king. Doubtless this was one of the chief reasons for the restoration of religion by the Concordat, as was shrewdly seen at the time by Lafayette, who laughingly exclaimed: "Confess, general, that your chief wish is for the little phial."[[314]] The sally drew from the First Consul an obscene disclaimer worthy of a drunken ostler. Nevertheless, the little phial was now on its way.
In order to divest the meeting of Pope and Emperor of any awkward ceremony, Napoleon arranged that it should take place on the road between Fontainebleau and Nemours, as a chance incident in the middle of a day's hunting. The benevolent old pontiff was reclining in his carriage, weary with the long journey through the cold of an early winter, when he was startled to see the retinue of his host. The contrast in every way was striking. The figure of the Emperor had now attained the fullness which betokens abounding health and strength: his face[pg.477] was slightly flushed with the hunt and the consciousness that he was master of the situation, and his form on horseback gained a dignity from which the shortness of his legs somewhat detracted when on foot. As he rode up attired in full hunting costume, he might have seemed the embodiment of triumphant strength. The Pope, on the other hand, clad in white garments and with white silk shoes, gave an impression of peaceful benevolence, had not his intellectual features borne signs of the protracted anxieties of his pontificate. The Emperor threw himself from his horse and advanced to meet his guest, who on his side alighted, rather unwillingly, in the mud to give and receive the embrace of welcome. Meanwhile Napoleon's carriage had been driven up: footmen were holding open both doors, and an officer of the Court politely handed Pius VII. to the left door, while the Emperor, entering by the right, took the seat of honour, and thus settled once for all the vexed question of social precedence.[[315]]
During the Pope's sojourn at Fontainebleau, Josephine breathed to him her anxiety as to her marriage; it having been only a civil contract, she feared its dissolution, and saw in the Pope's intervention a chance of a firmer union with her consort. The pontiff comforted her and required from Napoleon the due solemnization of his marriage; it was therefore secretly performed by Napoleon's uncle, Cardinal Fesch, two days before the coronation.[[316]]
It was not enough, however, that the successor of St. Peter should grace the coronation with his presence:[pg.478] the Emperor sought to touch the imagination of men by figuring as the successor of Charlemagne. We here approach one of the most interesting experiments of the modern world, which, if successful, would profoundly have altered the face of Europe and the character of its States. Even in its failure it attests Napoleon's vivid imagination and boundless mental resources. He aspired to be more than Emperor of the French: he wished to make his Empire a cosmopolitan realm, whose confines might rival those of the Holy Roman Empire of one thousand years before, and embrace scores of peoples in a grand, well-ordered European polity.
Already his dominions included a million of Germans in the Rhineland, Italians of Piedmont, Genoa, and Nice, besides Savoyards, Genevese, and Belgians. How potent would be his influence on the weltering chaos of German and Italian States, if these much-divided peoples learnt to look on him as the successor to the glories of Charlemagne! And this honour he was now to claim. However delusive was the parallel between the old semi-tribal polity and modern States where the peoples were awakening to a sense of their nationality, Napoleon was now in a position to clear the way for his great experiment. He had two charms wherewith to work, material prosperity and his gift of touching the popular imagination. The former of these was already silently working in his favour: the latter was first essayed at the coronation.
Already, after a sojourn at Boulogne, he had visited Aix-la-Chapelle, the city where Charlemagne's relics are entombed, and where Victor Hugo in some of his sublimest verse has pictured Charles V. kneeling in prayer to catch the spirit of the mediæval hero. Thither went Napoleon, but in no suppliant mood; for when Josephine was offered the arm-bones of the great dead, she also proudly replied that she would not deprive the city of that precious relic, especially as she had the support of an arm as great as that of Charlemagne.[[317]] The insignia and the sword of that monarch were now brought to[pg.479] Paris, and shed on the ceremony of coronation that historic gleam which was needed to redeem it from tawdry commonplace.
All that money and art could do to invest the affair with pomp and circumstance had already been done. The advice of the new Master of the Ceremonies, M. de Ségur, and the hints of the other nobles who had rallied to the new Empire, had been carefully collated by the untiring brain that now watched over France. The sum of 1,123,000 francs had been expended on the coronation robes of Emperor and Empress, and far more on crowns and tiaras. The result was seen in costumes of matchless splendour; the Emperor wore a French coat of red velvet embroidered in gold, a short cloak adorned with bees and the collar of the Legion of Honour in diamonds; and at the archbishop's palace he assumed the long purple robe of velvet profusely ornamented with ermine, while his brow was encircled by a wreath of laurel, meed of mighty conquerors. In the pommel of his sword flashed the famous Pitt diamond, which, after swelling the family fortune of the British statesman, fell to the Regent of France, and now graced the coronation of her Dictator. The Empress, radiant with joy at her now indissoluble union, bore her splendours with an easy grace that charmed all beholders and gave her an almost girlish air. She wore a robe of white satin, trimmed with silver and gold and besprinkled with golden bees: her waist and shoulders glittered with diamonds, while on her brows rested a diadem of the finest diamonds and pearls valued at more than a million francs.[[318]] The curious might remember that for a necklace of less than twice that value the fair fame of Marie Antoinette had been clouded over and the House of Bourbon shaken to its base.
The stately procession began with an odd incident: Napoleon and Josephine, misled apparently by the[pg.480] all-pervading splendour of the new state carriage, seated themselves on the wrong side, that is, in the seats destined for Joseph and Louis: the mistake was at once made good, with some merriment; but the superstitious saw in it an omen of evil.[[319]] And now, amidst much enthusiasm and far greater curiosity, the procession wound along through the Rue Nicaise and the Rue St. Honoré—streets where Bonaparte had won his spurs on the day of Vendémiaire—over the Pont-Neuf, and so to the venerable cathedral, where the Pope, chilled by long waiting, was ready to grace the ceremony. First he anointed Emperor and Empress with the holy oil; then, at the suitable place in the Mass he blessed their crowns, rings, and mantles, uttering the traditional prayers for the possession of the virtues and powers which each might seem to typify. But when he was about to crown the Emperor, he was gently waved aside, and Napoleon with his own hands crowned himself. A thrill ran through the august assembly, either of pity for the feelings of the aged pontiff or of admiration at the "noble and legitimate pride" of the great captain who claimed as wholly his own the crown which his own right arm had won. Then the cortège slowly returned to the middle of the nave, where a lofty throne had been reared.
Another omen now startled those who laid store by trifles. It was noticed that the sovereigns in ascending the steps nearly fell backwards under the weight of their robes and trains, though in the case of Josephine the anxious moment may have been due to the carelessness, whether accidental or studied, of her "mantle-bearers." But to those who looked beneath the surface of things was not this an all-absorbing portent, that all this religious pomp should be removed by scarcely eleven years from the time when this same nave echoed to the shouts and gleamed with the torches of the worshippers of the newly enthroned Goddess of Reason?
Revolutionary feelings were not wholly dead, but they now vented themselves merely in gibes. On the night[pg.481] before the coronation the walls of Paris were adorned with posters announcing: The last Representation of the French Revolution—for the Benefit of a poor Corsican Family. And after the event there were inquiries why the new throne had no glands d'or; the answer suggested because it was sanglant.[320] Beyond these quips and jests the Jacobins and royalists did not go. When the phrase your subjects was publicly assigned to the Corps Législatif by its courtier-like president, Fontanes, there was a flutter of wrath among those who had hoped that the new Empire was to be republican. But it quickly passed away; and no Frenchman, except perhaps Carnot, made so manly a protest as the man of genius at Vienna, who had composed the "Sinfonia Eroïca," and with grand republican simplicity inscribed it, "Beethoven à Bonaparte." When the master heard that his former hero had taken the imperial crown, he tore off the dedication with a volley of curses on the renegade and tyrant; and in later years he dedicated the immortal work to the memory of a great man.[pg.482]