I had, however, the opportunity of seeing what the perseverance of a woman of talent can effect.  Notwithstanding Bonaparte’s prejudices against Madame de Stael, which he never abandoned, she succeeded in getting herself introduced to him; and if anything could have disgusted him with flattery it would have been the admiration, or, to speak more properly, the worship, which she paid him; for she used to compare him to a god descended on earth,—­a kind of comparison which the clergy, I thought, had reserved for their own use.  But, unfortunately, to please Madame de Stael it would have been necessary that her god had been Plutua; for behind her eulogies lay a claim for two millions, which M. Necker considered still due to him on account of his good and worthy services.  However, Bonaparte said on this occasion that whatever value he might set on the suffrage of Madame de Stael, he did not think fit to pay so dear for it with the money of the State.  The conversion of Madame de Stael’s enthusiasm into hatred is well known, as are also the petty vexations, unworthy of himself, with which the Emperor harassed her in her retreat at Coppet.

Lauriston had arrived at Paris, where he made but a short stay, some days before Caffarelli, who was sent on a mission to Rome to sound the Papal Court, and to induce the Holy Father to come to Paris to consecrate Bonaparte at his coronation.  I have already described the nature of Bonaparte’s ideas on religion.  His notions on the subject seemed to amount to a sort of vague feeling rather than to any belief founded on reflection.  Nevertheless, he had a high opinion of the power of the Church; but not because he considered it dangerous to Governments, particularly to his own.  Napoleon never could have conceived how it was possible that a sovereign wearing a crown and a sword could have the meanness to kneel to a Pope, or to humble his sceptre before the keys of St. Peter.  His spirit was too great to admit of such a thought.  On the contrary, he regarded the alliance between the Church and his power as a happy means of influencing the opinions of the people, and as an additional tie which was to attach them to a Government rendered legitimate by the solemn sanction of the Papal authority.  Bonaparte was not deceived.  In this, as well as in many other things, the perspicacity of his genius enabled him to comprehend all the importance of a consecration bestowed on him by the Pope; more especially as Louis XVIII., without subjects, without territory, and wearing only an illusory crown, had not received that sacred unction by which the descendants of Hugh Capet become the eldest sons of the Church.

As soon as the Emperor was informed of the success of Caffarelli’s mission, and that the Pope, in compliance with his desire, was about to repair to Paris to confirm in his hands the sceptre of Charlemagne, nothing was thought of but preparations for that great event, which had been preceded by the recognition of Napoleon as Emperor of the French on the part of all the States of Europe, with the exception of England.