"'On Sunday last, in the midst of the silence of nature, I was walking in these gardens[412]; the sound of the bell of Ruel suddenly came and struck my ear and renewed all the impressions of my youth; I was moved, so powerful is the force of early habit, and said to myself:
"'If it is thus for me, what effect must similar memories not produce on simple and credulous men? Let your philosophers reply to that!'"...
"And, raising his hands to the sky:
"'Who is He that made all that?'"
In 1797, by his Proclamation of Macerata, Bonaparte authorized the residence of the French refugee priests in the Papal States, forbade them to be molested, ordered the convents to support them, and allotted them a salary in money.
His variations in Egypt, his rages against the Church, of which he was the restorer, show that an instinct of spirituality predominated in the very midst of his errors; for his lapses and his irritations are not of a philosophical nature and bear the impress of the religious character.
Bonaparte, when giving Vignale the details of the funeral lights by which he wished his remains to be surrounded, thought he saw signs that his instructions were displeasing to Antomarchi; he entered into an explanation with the doctor and said to him:
"You are above those weaknesses: but how can it be helped? I am neither a philosopher nor a doctor; I believe in God; I am of my father's religion. We cannot all be atheists.... Are you able not to believe in God? For, after all, everything proclaims His existence, and the greatest geniuses have believed it.... You are a doctor.... Those people only tackle matter: they never believe anything."
You strong minds of the day, give up your admiration for Napoleon; you have nothing to do with that poor man: did he not imagine that a comet had come to fetch him, as it had carried off Cæsar of old? Moreover, he "believed in God;" he "was of his father's religion;" he was not a "philosopher;" he was not an "atheist;" he had not, like you, given battle to the Almighty, although he had defeated a good many kings; he found that "everything proclaimed the existence" of the Supreme Being; he declared that "the greatest geniuses had believed in that existence," and he wished to believe as his fathers did. Lastly, O monstrous thing, this foremost man of modern times, this man of all the centuries, was a Christian in the nineteenth century! His will begins with this clause:
"I die in the Apostolic and Roman Religion, in the bosom of which I was born more than fifty years ago."
In the third paragraph of the will of Louis XVI., we read:
"I die in the union of our Holy Mother the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church."
The Revolution has given us many a lesson; but is there any one of them to be compared with this? Napoleon and Louis XVI. making the same profession of faith! Would you know the value of the Cross? Seek through the whole world for what best suits virtue in misfortune or the man of genius dying.