[Napoleon wished to be informed of every particular of the furniture, government, and order of the house, the instruction and education of the pupils.  The internal regulations were submitted to him.  One of the intended rules, drawn up by Madame Campan, proposed that the children should hear mass on Sundays and Thursdays.  Napoleon himself wrote on the margin, “every day.”]

“In the summer of 1811,” relates Madame Campan, “Napoleon, accompanied by Marie Louise and several personages of distinction, visited the establishment at Ecouen.  After inspecting the chapel and the refectories, Napoleon desired that the three principal pupils might be presented to him.  ‘Sire,’ said I, ‘I cannot select three; I must present six.’  He turned on his heel and repaired to the platform, where, after seeing all the classes assembled, he repeated his demand.  ‘Sire,’ said I, ’I beg leave to inform your Majesty that I should commit an injustice towards several other pupils who are as far advanced as those whom I might have the honour to present to you.’

“Berthier and others intimated to me, in a low tone of voice, that I should get into disgrace by my noncompliance.  Napoleon looked over the whole of the house, entered into the most trivial details, and after addressing questions to several of the pupils:  ‘Well, madame,’ said he, ’I am satisfied; show me your six best pupils.’” Madame Campan presented them to him; and as he stepped into his carriage, he desired that their names might be sent to Berthier.  On addressing the list to the Prince de Neufchatel, Madame Campan added to it the names of four other pupils, and all the ten obtained a pension of 300 francs.  During the three hours which this visit occupied, Marie Louise did not utter a single word.

M. de Beaumont, chamberlain to the Empress Josephine, one day at Malmaison
was expressing his regret that M. D-----, one of Napoleon’s generals, who
had recently been promoted, did not belong to a great family.   “You
mistake, monsieur,” observed Madame Campan, “he is of very ancient
descent; he is one of the nephews of Charlemagne.   All the heroes of our
army sprang from the elder branch of that sovereign’s family, who never
emigrated.”

When Madame Campan related this circumstance she added:  “After the 30th of March, 1814, some officers of the army of Conde presumed to say to certain French marshals that it was a pity they were not more nobly connected.  In answer to this, one of them said, ’True nobility, gentlemen, consists in giving proofs of it.  The field of honour has witnessed ours; but where are we to look for yours?  Your swords have rusted in their scabbards.  Our laurels may well excite envy; we have earned them nobly, and we owe them solely to our valour.  You have merely inherited a name.  This is the distinction between us.”

[When one of the princes of the smaller German States was showing Marechal Lannes, with a contemptuous superiority of manner but ill concealed, the portraits of his ancestors, and covertly alluding to the absence of Lannes’s, that general turned the tables on him by haughtily remarking, “But I am an ancestor.”]