Le Comte de Rivarol.
The Cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle was built by Karl the Great and consecrated by Leo III[73]. Two prelates failing to attend the ceremony, their places were filled by two Bishops of Maastricht, long deceased, and resuscitated for the purpose. Charlemagne, having lost a beautiful mistress, pressed her body in his arms and refused to be separated from it. His passion was attributed to a charm: the young corpse was examined, and a tiny pearl found beneath the tongue. The pearl was flung into a marsh; Charlemagne became madly enamoured of the marsh, and ordered it to be filled up: there he built a palace and a church, to spend his life in one and his death in the other. The authorities here are Archbishop Turpin[74] and Petrarch[75].
At Cologne I admired the cathedral: if it were finished, it would be the finest Gothic monument in Europe. The monks were the painters, the sculptors, the architects, and the masons of their basilicas; they gloried in the title of master-mason, cœmentarius. It is curious to hear ignorant philosophers and chattering democrats cry out to-day against the monks, as though those frocked proletarians, those mendicant orders to whom we owe almost everything, had been gentlemen!
Cologne reminded me of Caligula[76] and St. Bruno[77]; I have seen the remains of the dykes built by the former at Baiæ, and the deserted cell of the latter at the Grande Chartreuse.
I went up the Rhine as far as Coblentz: Confluentia. The Army of the Princes was no longer there. I crossed those empty kingdoms: inania regna; I saw the beautiful valley of the Rhine, the Tempe of the barbarian muses, where the knights appeared around the ruins of their castles, where one hears the clash of arms at night, when war is at hand.
Frederic William II.
Between Coblentz and Trèves, I fell in with the Prussian Army: I was passing along the column when, coming up with the guards, I noticed that they were marching in battle order, with cannon in line; the King[78] and the Duke of Brunswick[79] were in the centre of the square, composed of Frederic's old grenadiers. My white uniform caught the King's eye: he sent for me; the Duke of Brunswick and he took off their hats and saluted the old French Army in my person. They asked me my name, my regiment, the place where I was going to join the Princes. This military welcome touched me: I replied with emotion that, on learning in America of my King's misfortunes, I had returned to shed my blood in his service. The generals and officers surrounding Frederic William made a movement of approbation, and the Prussian sovereign said:
"Sir, one always recognises the sentiments of the French nobility."