Napoleon's eyes flashed down the silent assembly with an expression of terrible anger. When he spoke, his voice rolled like thunder through the hall, and echoed in the trembling hearts of those who were conscious of their guilt, and who hung their heads under the outburst of their sovereign's wrath. "Gentlemen of the legislature," he said, "you come to greet me. I accept your greetings, and will tell you what you ought to hear. You have it in your power to do much good, and you have done nothing but mischief. Eleven-twelfths of you are patriotic, the rest are factious. What do you hope by putting yourselves in opposition? To gain possession of power? But what are your means? Are you the representatives of the people? I am. Four times I have been invoked by the nation, and have had the votes of four millions of men. I have a title to supreme authority, which you have not. You are nothing but the representatives of the departments. Your report is drawn up with an astute and perfidious spirit, of the effects of which you are well aware. Two battles lost in Champagne would not have done me so much mischief. I have sacrificed my passions, my pride, my ambition, to the good of France. I was in expectation that you would appreciate my motives, and not urge me to what is inconsistent with the honor of the nation. Far from that, in your report you mingle irony with reproach: you tell me that adversity has given me salutary counsels. How can you reproach me with my misfortunes? I have supported them with honor, because I have received from nature a sturdy temper; and if I had not possessed it, I would never have raised myself to the first throne in the world. Nevertheless, I have need of consolation, and I expected it from you: so far from receiving it, you have endeavored to depreciate me; but I am one of those whom you may kill, but cannot dishonor. Is it by such reproaches that you expect to restore the lustre of the throne? What is the throne? Four pieces of gilded wood, covered with a piece of velvet. The real throne has its seat in the heart of the nation. You cannot separate the two without mutual injury; for it has more need of me than I have of it. What could the nation do without a chief? When the question was, how we could repel the enemy, you demand institutions as if we had them not! Are you not content with the constitution? If you are not, you should have told me so four years ago, or postponed your demand to two years after a general peace. Is this the moment to insist on such a demand? You wish to imitate the Constituent Assembly, and commence a revolution? Be it so. You will find I will not imitate Louis XVI.: I would rather abandon the throne, I would prefer making part of the sovereign people, to being an enslaved king. I am sprung from the people; I know the obligations I contracted when I ascended the throne. You have done much mischief; you would have done me still more, if I had allowed your report to be printed.—You speak of abuses, of vexations. I know, as well as you, that such have existed; they arose from circumstances, and the misfortunes of the times. But was it necessary to let all Europe into our secrets? Is it fitting to wash our dirty linen in public? In what you say there is some truth and some falsehood. What, then, was your obvious duty? To have confidentially made known your grounds of complaint to me, by whom they would have been thankfully received. I do not, any more than yourselves, love those who have oppressed you. In three months we shall have peace: the enemy will be driven from our territory, or I shall be dead. We have greater resources than you imagine: our enemies have never conquered us—never will. They will be pursued over the frontier more quickly than they crossed it. Go!" [Footnote: Bucher et Roux, "Histoire Parl. de France," vol. xxxix., pp. 460, 46l.]
The last words of the speech were still resounding through the hall when the deputies, with pale faces, bowing timidly and silently before the throne, turned and walked toward the door. All eyes were riveted on them, and it was felt that the men whom the emperor dismissed with such a strain of vehement invective were twenty new enemies whom Napoleon sent into the provinces, and who would bring a new hostile army—public opinion—into the field against him. Many hoped that the emperor, perceiving his blunder, would call back the deputies by some pleasant word, in order to bring about a reconciliation between him and those who, whatever the emperor might say, represented in the throne-hall the opinion of the people.
But Napoleon did not call them back; standing on his throne, haughty and defiant, he looked after the disappearing deputies in anger; and only when the door of the anteroom closed, did he turn his eyes toward those who surrounded him. As if by a magician's wand his face resumed its former expression of august calmness. He slowly left the throne, and, dropping here and there a few condescending words, crossed the hall. Suddenly he noticed Baron Fontaine, the architect of the imperial palaces. "Ah," exclaimed Napoleon, quickly advancing toward him, "you are here, Fontaine? I intended to send for you to- day. Did you bring your plans with you?"
"Yes, sire."
"Well, then, come; and you, ministers, Duke de Rovigo, Duke de
Vicenza, Duke de Bassano, pray follow me into my cabinet."
The officers and cavaliers who remained in the hall looked after the emperor with anxious glances. "A cabinet meeting on this holiday! and at which the imperial architect has to be present!" they whispered. "What means this? Will the emperor commission M. de Fontaine to transform the Tuileries into a fortress, and construct ramparts and ditches? Are we, if all should be lost, to defend ourselves? Or will the emperor convert Paris into a fortress? Is M. de Fontaine to erect outworks and fortifications? Or will the emperor have a new Bastile built for the purpose of confining the traitorous legislature and several hundreds of these new-fangled royalists who are now springing up like mushrooms?"
But the emperor did not think of all this when, followed by the three ministers and Baron Fontaine, he entered his cabinet. An expression of affability overspread his features, and round his lips played the sunny smile which appeared so irresistible to all who had ever seen it. "Come hither, gentlemen," he said, merrily, "let us act here as judges. Fontaine brings us plans for a palace for the King of Rome. It is high time for me to think of building one for the heir-apparent, and this idea has engrossed my mind for a long period. If the times had not been so unfavorable, it would already have been completed. I will begin now, in order to prove to the foreign powers how great is the confidence felt by France and her emperor in their ability to withstand the attacks of the allies; for, while their armies are fighting the enemy, they are constructing a palace for their future emperor.—Now let me see your plans, Fontaine; unroll them!"
Fontaine spread out on the table the papers which he had brought with him from the anteroom. The emperor bent over them, and asked the architect to explain to him the different lines and figures. The three ministers stood beside them, grave and silent, and their furtive glances seemed to ask whether this really was not a scene intentionally contrived by the emperor—whether he really could think of building a palace for the King of Rome at a moment, when France was hemmed in on all sides, and menaced by enemies, endangering the existence of the imperial throne!
But Napoleon really seemed to be quite sincere. With his magic energy he appeared to have banished all gloomy thoughts, and to be engrossed only in plans for a serene future. "See here, Caulaincourt," he said, pointing to one of the plans, "what do you think of this? It is a sort of castle or fort, and looks well, does it not?"
"Very, indeed," replied Caulaincourt. "It reminds me of the palace at Oranienbaum, which Paul I. built. The towers at the corners, the bastions, and ditches, are similar; and the interior had not only many rooms, but secret staircases, doors, and hidden passages."