But woe to him who dared to suggest any doubt about
what Napoleon believed, or seemed to believe!
A German professor, Richter, more a pedant than a
courtier, and more sincere than wise, addressed a
short memorial to Bonaparte, in which he proved, from
his intimacy with antiquity, that most of the pretended
relics of Charlemagne were impositions on the credulous;
that the portrait was a drawing of this century, the
diploma written in the last; the crucifix manufactured
within fifty, and the ring, perhaps, within ten years.
The night after Bonaparte had perused this memorial,
a police commissary, accompanied by four gendarmes,
entered the professor’s bedroom, forced him to
dress, and ushered him into a covered cart, which
carried him under escort to the left bank of the Rhine;
where he was left with orders, under pain of death,
never more to enter the territory of the French Empire.
This expeditious and summary justice silenced all
other connoisseurs and antiquarians; and relics of
Charlemagne have since poured in in such numbers from
all parts of France, Italy, Germany, and even Denmark,
that we are here in hope to see one day established
a Museum Charlemagne, by the side of the museums Napoleon
and Josephine. A ballad, written in monkish
Latin, said to be sung by the daughters and maids of
Charlemagne at his Court on great festivities, was
addressed to Duroc, by a Danish professor, Cranener,
who in return was presented, on the part of Bonaparte,
with a diamond ring worth twelve thousand livres—L
500. This ballad may, perhaps, be the foundation
of future Bibliotheque or Lyceum Charlemagne.
LETTER XI.
Paris, August, 1805.
My Lord:—On the arrival of her
husband at Aix-la-Chapelle, Madame Napoleon had lost
her money by gambling, without recovering her health
by using the baths and drinking the waters; she was,
therefore, as poor as low-spirited, and as ill-tempered
as dissatisfied. Napoleon himself was neither
much in humour to supply her present wants, provide
for her extravagances, or to forgive her ill-nature;
he ascribed the inefficacy of the waters to her excesses,
and reproached her for her too great condescension
to many persons who presented themselves at her drawing-room
and in her circle, but who, from their rank in life,
were only fit to be seen as supplicants in her antechambers,
and as associates with her valets or chambermaids.
The fact was that Madame Napoleon knew as well as
her husband that these gentry were not in their place
in the company of an Empress; but they were her creditors,
some of them even Jews; and as long as she continued
debtor to them she could not decently—or
rather, she dared not prevent them from being visitors
to her. By confiding her situation to her old
friend, Talleyrand, she was, however, soon released
from those troublesome personages. When the
Minister was informed of the occasion of the attendance
of these impertinent intruders, he humbly proposed
to Bonaparte not to pay their demands and their due,
but to make them examples of severe justice in transporting
them to Cayenne, as the only sure means to prevent,
for the future, people of the same description from
being familiar or audacious.