In the Dictionnaire des Girouettes mention is made of a Caffarelli (no Christian name) who was created a Count of the Empire, and Grand Eagle of the Légion d’Honneur by Napoleon. The king afterwards created him Chevalier of the Order of St Louis, and Commandant at Rennes; whilst in 1815 he again reverted to the service of the Emperor. There was also a Baron Caffarelli who bore similar arms, but he was Bishop of Saint Brieux, whilst on this plate no ecclesiastical emblems are shown. He, too, was a member of the Légion d’Honneur.
To which of these two this plate belonged I cannot decide, nor is the matter of the first importance.
One plate may be named which forms an exception to the monotonous regularity of the heraldic style under the First Empire; it is that of Antoine-Pierre-Augustin de Piis, a dramatist. His monogram hangs on a palm tree, each branch of which bears the name of some well-known singer,—Panard, Favart, Collé, etc., whilst beneath are the titles of the vaudevilles he had himself written. Another artistic little plate of this period is that of M. Dubuisson, dated 1805, on page 130.
Lucien Bonaparte, Prince of Canino, younger brother of Napoleon, resided some time in England, but died at Viterbo in 1840. His son, Charles, Prince of Canino, distinguished as a naturalist, died in 1857, and it is not easy to decide to which of the two this quiet, unpretentious little Canino plate belonged.
The books of the first Napoleon were sumptuously bound, but he used no book-plate. Monsieur L. Joly, in his Ex-Libris Imaginaires, furnishes one such as might well have been used by the great soldier and law-maker. An imperial eagle casts a thunder-bolt, which illuminates the peaks of the Alps; below are seen the emblems of war, the owl, symbolic of wisdom, the Cross of the Légion d’Honneur, and the books of the Code Napoléon.
