be pardoned if they hoped at least that he who had rescued civilisation in the shape of the Church, the law, and of marriage--who favoured the arts, and wished to reorganise society in France had in his own soul some of the noble inspirations which conceive true greatness and put great thoughts into execution. Those who mean to lead the human race astray do so by fair words, promises, and appearances; and when the Rémusats entered the service of Napoleon, both the master and the servants were still young. Time had yet to show at what price Napoleon sold his favour, and the Rémusats had yet to learn all that the servants of a tyrant are expected to sacrifice in the way of dignity and disinterestedness. Nothing, for example, is more striking than Madame de Rémusat's delineation of the steps by which Josephine's husband moved on to deserting her, and by which the First Consul moved on to autocracy in France and to overwhelming power in Europe. His own account of his progress was given with the most unblushing simplicity. He dreamt of rising: he meant to rise, and he rose, because he was, as he said, a completely ex'ceptional personage, standing always alone on his own side, 'with all the world standing on the other.'

In the first volume of these souvenirs we see Napoleon looking curiously at the crown of France on the floor,' and preparing, as he expressed it, to pick it upon the point of 'the sword.' We see him inviting the Church to support him in return for the Concordat, and for a journey made through Belgium in the edifying company of Cardinal Caprara. We see him trying to make Europe believe him necessary to all foreign sovereigns, and to accept him as a safeguard against those republican influences which, when they are rampant in France, are apt to spread beyond her borders. Perhaps at the moment that this poor crown, picked up on the point of the sword,' first encircled the pale brows and the smooth dark hair of the Corsican, the kings of Europe did breathe a sigh of comparative relief, not knowing what awaited them. Had the new Emperor been able or willing to give a liberal constitution to France, perhaps by his presence and his power the repose of nations would have been consolidated in Europe. But he did nothing of the kind. He began by being captivated by an equality which was to elevate himself, and then soon contrived, as Metternich said of him, to confiscate for his own benefit all the results of the revolution. It is the curse of all fortuitous power that it needs a series of fortunate accidents to maintain it. It must be always recruited by success, and despotic sovereigns are always either tacitly or openly obliged

to have a personal policy in opposition to the interests of the people, perhaps to those of the nation at large. But Napoleon was not generous, but entirely selfish. He understood the prestige of legitimacy and of hereditary rule, so that the dynasty early became an article of his creed; but in the meantime his policy was concentrated egotism, and, provided that he could enjoy the fruits of his ambition, he was cynically content to know and to say that the world would give a great ouff when 'they heard that he was dead.'

The first volume of Madame de Rémusat's Memoirs, which describes the culmination of his hopes in the possession of an imperial title, also gives the first indication of Napoleon's ultimate decline and fall. To her honour be it said, it gives also the first signs of blame when she saw of what measures Bonaparte was capable, and what arguments he could use to justify them. The prosecution of Moreau, the murder of the Duc d'Enghien, and the death of Pichegru first produced a revolt in the minds of Frenchmen. It became apparent that personal advancement and safety were the only objects of his worship, and that all the sacrifices which he imposed on others were but staves in the ladder of his own success. It is true that when he sprang from the blood-stained moat of Vincennes upon the throne of trembling France, the multitude echoed his cry, 'I have won the game.' He had won it, but from that moment he ceased to be loved, though he flattered himself that upon such a stroke there would follow a cessation of all political action, and that France would appreciate the repose." The French, he said, can always be ruled through their vanity. What,'

Bishop Burnet relates of Cromwell, that he said, 'Assassinations เ were such detestable things that he would never begin them; but it 'any of the King's party should endeavour to assassinate him, and fail in it, he would make an assassinating war of it, and destroy the whole 'family. That is precisely the defence set up by the Bonapartists, and even adopted by M. Thiers, with reference to the murder of the Duc d'Enghien. The conspiracy of Georges against the life of the First Consul had nearly succeeded. It was believed in Paris that a Bourbon Prince had landed, or was about to land, in Brittany. Napoleon himself exclaimed, as he left the room after the melancholy dinner on the day of the execution, Ils ont voulu assassiner la Révo'lution française.' We have heard M. Thiers relate the story with extraordinary animation. Bonaparte acted on Cromwell's sanguinary maxim. But we cannot conceive what induced M. and Madame de Rémusat, honourable people, feeling as they did the atrocity of this action, to remain for years in the service of the man who had committed it.

he once scornfully asked of the Rémusats, made the revolution? Vanity.-What will unmake the revolution? Vanity.' Bread and games were to please the populace, laurels and bâtons would reward the soldiers, while titles, uniforms, and court carriages and frippery would reconcile the upper classes to his sway. 6 Liberty is a mere pretext,' he said one day. Men like the Abbé Siéyès may choose to cry out " Despo"tism!" but my authority will not be the less popular. I have the populace and the army on my side, and the man must be a fool who with those two things cannot manage 6 to rule.'

Madame de Rémusat early began to discover that the part of a lady-in-waiting to Joséphine was really incompatible with pleasant social life. One stormy episode succeeded to the other at the Court, not rendered more agreeable by the intense dislike she felt to the brothers and sisters of Napoleon. There is much matter to their disadvantage in the first two volumes that seems to have been dictated by spite. Joseph Bonaparte had been an attorney's clerk in Ajaccio, and the sisters of Napoleon were far from being models of any of the virtues most prized in women. The great Emperor himself, though the mightiest of monarchs, was never restrained by the feelings or sentiments of a gentleman, and sometimes acted very like a Turk. Madame de Rémusat goes out of her way to be scandalous, and her anecdotes are the more to be regretted because the general impression which this authoress leaves on us is that, unlike Madame Junot, she was a highminded and a modest woman. She is not flippant, though sometimes indelicate, and her anecdotes of the Bonapartes are almost too horrible to be true. But Joséphine's friend is certainly one-sided in her view of this family circle. Womanlike, she has far more to say against the women than against the men on whom Napoleon bestowed thrones and crowns. This was not improbable when we consider all that Joséphine had to suffer from Elise, Caroline, and Pauline Bonaparte; still, if a strict measure of justice were to be meted out all round, Joséphine's own past, especially in the matter of Barras, left something to be desired; while the existence of the late Duc de Morny cannot be assumed as a pledge of that immaculate virtue on the part of Hortense which Madame de Rémusat wishes us to accept as an article of historical belief. We think, however, that she establishes by sufficient proofs the disputed fact that Napoleon III. was the son of Louis Bonaparte; it is impossible to believe that Hortense engaged in an intrigue with a Dutch admiral immediately after the

death of her eldest child, whom she passionately loved and lamented.

The following sketch of the princesses and of their tempers on the day when Napoleon became Emperor has an air of veracity about it, and shows the jealous feelings that existed among his sisters:

'I have mentioned what persons Bonaparte had invited to dine with him on that day. Just before we went to dinner Duroc, the governor of the palace, went round to apprise us all of the titles of prince and princess which it would be necessary to give to Joseph and to Louis Bonaparte and to their respective wives. Madame Bacciocchi and Madame Murat seemed to be thunderstruck at this distinction of rank between themselves and their sisters-in-law. Madame Murat especially had great difficulty in concealing her ill-humour. Towards six o'clock the new Emperor came in, and began, without any appearance of constraint, to greet everybody by their new dignities. I remember that at that moment I received a profound impression, which might well have all the appearances of a presentiment. The day had first been beautiful, but very hot. Towards the moment when the Senate arrived at St. Cloud, the weather suddenly clouded over, the skies grew dark, some claps of thunder were heard, and for some hours we were threatened with a violent storm. This black and ominous sky, which seemed to hang like a weight over the palace of St. Cloud, appeared to me as a sad presage, and I had difficulty in driving away the sadness that I felt. As for the Emperor, he was gay and serene, and I think he privately enjoyed the little constraint which the new ceremonial placed between us all. The Empress preserved all her gentle ease; Joseph and Louis seemed pleased; Madame Joseph resigned to whatever was asked of her, Madame Louis in like manner submissive; and, what can never be too much praised in comparison, Eugène Beauharnais remained simple and natural, and showed a mind free from all secret ambition or discontent. The same cannot be said of the new Marshal Murat; but the fear that he had of his brother-inlaw obliged him to control himself, and he preserved a gloomy silence. As for Madame Murat, she was in the depths of despair, and during dinner was so little mistress of herself, when she heard the Emperor more than once name "Princess Louis," that she could not keep back her tears. She drank several large glasses of water, so as to seem to be doing something, and to put herself to rights again, but the tears had the best of it. Everybody else was embarrassed, but her brother smiled maliciously. As for me, I felt the greatest surprise, and at the same time I may say a sort of disgust, to see this young and pretty face disfigured by these emotions of bad temper. Madame Murat was then twenty-two or twenty-three years old; her face of a dazzling whiteness; her beautiful fair hair, the crown of flowers that encircled it, the pink dress she wore-all this gave to her person a something young and childlike which contrasted disagreeably with those feelings, belonging to a very different age, by which we could see that she was shaken. Nobody pitied her tears. Madame Bacciocchi, being older and more

mistress of herself, did not cry, but she showed herself brusque and cutting, and treated each of us with marked haughtiness. The Emperor seemed at last quite irritated by the conduct of the two sisters, and he aggravated their ill-temper by hits and hints which, if they were indirect, at least hit those ladies very directly. . . . Next day, after a family dinner, there was a violent scene. I was not a witness of it, but we heard the noise of it through the wall which separated the saloon of the Empress from that in which we sat. Madame Murat burst out into complaints, tears, and reproaches; she asked why she and her sisters were to be condemned to obscurity and contempt whilst strangers were covered with honours and dignities. Bonaparte was very rough in his answers to her, declaring several times over that he was the master and able to distribute dignities according to his will. It was on this occasion that he let fall the piquant words which people have remembered:-"In truth, ladies, to see your airs, one would imagine that we hold the crown from the hands of the late King, our father." The Empress told me afterwards of this violent discussion. However good-natured she might be, she could not help being a little amused at the sorrows of a person who hated her most cordially. At the end of this conversation Madame Murat, beyond herself in despair, and at the rough words she had just heard, fell on the floor and fainted away.'

If the names and titles of the new Court proved such apples of discord, the coronation was not likely to pass over without some manifestations of jealousy and mutual ill-will. The new Emperor, of course, meant to be crowned, but his family, if Madame de Rémusat is to be believed, was anxious from the first that Joséphine should have no part in the great ceremony. The princesses were actuated by jealousy; Louis Bonaparte by a view to the interest of his own sons; and Joseph advised his august brother to make the wife who could not give an heir to the new empire a mere witness of the coronation. Pressed in this way by his own family, the Emperor certainly began by lending an ear to their intrigues, and some words which escaped from him agitated his wife extremely; in fact, Joséphine was for some weeks kept in a state of cruel uncertainty. The following is Madame de Rémusat's account of the way in which the matter was at last cleared up between the husband and wife :

'Harassed too much by his brother, and aware of the joy which the Bonapartes felt when they believed that they had carried their point, touched also by the comparison which he made between the conduct of his wife and her children and the triumphant manners of his own relations, who were imprudent enough to boast that they had at last brought him round to their ends, he felt a secret pleasure in now outwitting the plot which had been spun around him, and after a long hesitation, which threw the Empress into the most mortal anxiety,

VOL. CLII. NO. CCCXI.

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