The Court of the Empress Josephine | Page 4

himself eternal; to think that he has always held it and will
always keep it. Indeed, how is it possible to escape intoxication by the
fumes of perpetual incense? How can a man tell the truth to himself
when there is no one about him courageous enough to tell it to him?
When the press is muzzled, and public power rests only on general
approval, when there is no slave even to remind the triumphant hero, as
in the ancient ovations, that he is only a man, how is it possible to
avoid being infatuated by one's greatness and not to imagine one's self
the absolute master of one's destiny? The new Caesar met with no
resistance. He was to publish scornfully in the Moniteur the protest of
Louis XVIII. against his accession. He was to be adored both by fierce
Revolutionists and by great lords, by regicides and by Royalists and

ecclesiastics. It seemed as if with him everything began, or rather
started anew. "The old world was submerged," says Chateaubriand;
"when the flood of anarchy withdrew, Napoleon appeared at the
beginning of a new world, like those giants described by profane and
sacred history at the beginning of society, appearing on earth after the
Deluge."
The former general of the Revolution enjoyed his situation as absolute
sovereign. He studied the laws of etiquette as closely as he studied the
condition of his troops. He saw that the men of the old régime were
more conversant in the art of flattery, more eager than the new men. As
Madame de Staël says: "Whenever a gentleman of the old court
recalled the ancient etiquette, suggested an additional bow, a certain
way at knocking at the door of an ante-chamber, a ceremonious method
of presenting a despatch, of folding a letter, of concluding it with this
or that formula, he greeted as if he had helped on the happiness of the
human race." Napoleon attached, or pretended to attach, great
importance to the thousand nothings which up the life of courts. He
established in the palace the same discipline as in the camps.
Everything became a matter of rule. Courtiers studied formalities as
officers studied the art of war. Regulations were as closely observed in
the drawing-rooms as in the tents. At the end of a few months
Napoleon was to have the most brilliant, the most rigid court of Europe.
At times the whirl of vanities surrounded him filled with impatience the
great central sun, without whom his satellites would have been nothing.
At other times, however, his pride was gratified by the thought that it
was his will, his fancy, which evoked from nothing all the grandees of
the earth. He was not pained at seeing such eagerness in behalf of
trifles that he had invented. He liked to fill his courtiers with raptures or
with despair, by a smile or a frown. He thought his sisters' ambition
childish, but it amused him; and if they had to cry a little at first, he
finally granted them what they wanted.
May 19, after the family dinner, Madame Murat was more and more
distressed at not being a Princess, when she was a Bonaparte by birth,
while Madame Joseph and Madame Louis, one of whom was a Clary,
the other a Beauharnais, bore that title, and burst out into complaints
and reproaches. "Why," she asked of her all-powerful brother, "why
condemn me and my sisters to obscurity, to contempt, while covering

strangers with honors and dignities?" At first these words annoyed
Napoleon. "In fact," he exclaimed, "judging from your pretensions, one
would suppose that we inherited the crown from the late King our
father." At the end of the interview, Madame Murat, not satisfied with
crying, fainted away. Napoleon softened at once, and a few days later
there appeared a notification in the Moniteur that henceforth the
Emperor's sisters should be called Princesses and Imperial Highnesses.
The Empress's Maid of Honor was Madame de La Rochefoucauld; her
Lady of the Bedchamber was Madame de Lavalette. Her Ladies of the
Palace, whose number was soon raised to twelve, and later still more
augmented, were at first only four: Madame de Talhouët, Madame de
Luçay, Madame de Lauriston, and Madame de Rémusat. These ladies,
too, aroused the hottest jealousies, and soon they gave rise to a sort of
parody of the questions of vanity that agitated the Emperor's family.
The women who were admitted to the Empress's intimacy could never
console themselves for the privileges accorded to the Ladies of the
Palace.
In essentials all courts are alike. On a greater or smaller scale they are
rank with the same pettinesses, the same chattering gossip, the same
trivial squabbles as the porter's lodge, ante-chambers, and servants'
quarters. If we examine these things from the