Many endeavours were made to persuade the First Consul to perform in public the duties imposed by the Catholic religion.  An influential example, it was urged, was required.  He told me once that he had put an end to that request by the following declaration:  “Enough of this.  Ask me no more.  You will not obtain your object.  You shall never make a hypocrite of me.  Let us remain where we are.”

I have read in a work remarkable on many accounts that it was on the occasion of the Concordat of the 15th July 1801 that the First Consul abolished the republican calendar and reestablished the Gregorian.  This is an error.  He did not make the calendar a religious affair.  The ‘Senatus-consulte’, which restored the use of the Gregorian calendar, to commence in the French Empire from the 11th Nivose, year xiv. (1st January 1806), was adopted on the 22d Fructidor, year XIII. (9th September 1805), more than four years after the Concordat.  The re-establishment of the ancient calendar had no other object than to bring us into harmony with the rest of Europe on a point so closely connected with daily transactions, which were much embarrassed by the decadary calendar.

Bonaparte at length, however, consented to hear Mass, and St. Cloud was the place where this ancient usage was first re-established.  He directed the ceremony to commence sooner than the hour announced in order that those who would only make a scoff at it might not arrive until the service was ended.

Whenever the First Consul determined to hear Mass publicly on Sundays in the chapel of the Palace a small altar was prepared in a room near his cabinet of business.  This room had been Anne of Austria’s oratory.  A small portable altar, placed on a platform one step high, restored it to its original destination.  During the rest of the week this chapel was used as a bathing-room.  On Sunday the door of communication was opened, and we heard Mass sitting in our cabinet of business.  The number of persons there never exceeded three or four, and the First Consul seldom failed to transact some business during the ceremony, which never lasted longer than twelve minutes.  Next day all the papers had the news that the First Consul had heard Mass in his apartments.  In the same way Louis XVIII. has often heard it in his!

On the 19th of July 1801 a papal bull absolved Talleyrand from his vows.  He immediately married Madame Grandt, and the affair obtained little notice at the time.  This statement sufficiently proves how report has perverted the fact.  It has been said that Bonaparte on becoming Emperor wished to restore that decorum which the Revolution had destroyed, and therefore resolved to put an end to the improper intimacy which subsisted between Talleyrand and Madame Grandt.  It is alleged that the Minister at first refused to marry the lady, but that he at last found it necessary to obey the peremptory order of his master.  This pretended resurrection of morality by Bonaparte is excessively ridiculous.  The bull was not registered in the Council of State until the 19th of August 1802.