Since the month of October the Legislative Body had been convoked to attend the Emperor’s coronation.  Many deputies arrived, and with them a swarm of those presidents of cantons who occupied a conspicuous place in the annals of ridicule at the close of the year 1804.  They became the objects of all sorts of witticisms and jests.  The obligation of wearing swords made their appearance very grotesque.  As many droll, stories were told of them as were ten years afterwards related of those who were styled the voltigeurs of Louis XIV.  One of these anecdotes was so exceedingly ludicrous that, though it was probably a mere invention, yet I cannot refrain from relating it.  A certain number of these presidents were one day selected to be presented to the Pope; and as most of them were very poor they found it necessary to combine economy with the etiquette necessary to be observed under the new order of things.  To save the expense of hiring carriages they therefore proceeded to the Pavilion de Flore on foot, taking the precaution of putting on gaiters to preserve their white silk stockings from the mud which covered the streets, for it was then the month of December.  On arriving at the Tuileries one of the party put his gaiters into his pocket.  It happened that the Pope delivered such an affecting address that all present were moved to tears, and the unfortunate president who had disposed of his gaiters in the way just mentioned drew them out instead of his handkerchief and smeared his face over with mud.  The Pope is said to have been much amused at this mistake.  If this anecdote should be thought too puerile to be repeated here, I may observe that it afforded no small merriment to Bonaparte, who made Michot the actor relate it to the Empress at Paris one evening after a Court performance.

Napoleon had now attained the avowed object of his ambition; but his ambition receded before him like a boundless horizon.  On the 1st of December; the day on which the Senate presented to the Emperor the result of the votes for hereditary succession, Francois de Neufchateau delivered an address to him, in which there was no want of adulatory expressions.  As President of the Senate he had had some practice in that style of speechmaking; and he only substituted the eulogy of the Monarchical Government for that of the Republican Government ‘a sempre bene’, as the Italians say.

If I wished to make comparisons I could here indulge in some curious ones.  Is it not extraordinary that Fontainebleau should have witnessed, at the interval of nearly ten years, Napoleon’s first interview with the Pope, and his last farewell to his army, and that the Senate, who had previously given such ready support to Bonaparte, should in 1814 have pronounced his abdication at Fontainebleau.