Page:History of the Empress Josephine (2).pdf/13

 HISTORY OF THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE. 13

crossed upon her boson, then slowly and gracefully rising, fixed upon her husband a look of gratitude and tenderness. Napoleon returned the glance. It was a silent but conscious interchange of the hopes, the promises, and the memories of Fears!” The ridicule which has attached to the manners of Na- poleon's court has been greatly exaggerated, and from evi- dent design, in writings published by renegade courtiers since the restoration. We have Josephine's own authority, whose judgment and taste are indisputable, that the emperor himself, from the first, observed with ease the habitudes of his rank. “Most certainly," such are her own words when conversing in the little circle of her own exiled court, "most truly do I regard the emperor as a man who has no equal. In camps, at the council beard, they find him extraordinary, but in the interior of his palace he ever appeared to me still more remarkable. I confess that, notwithstanding my experience of the world and its usages, the commencement of the imperial forms embarrassed me. The emperor, on the contrary, made a sport, a pleasure of them; and in all the palace, he alone, beyond contradiction, best understood their observances. Lannes, who enjoyed full licence of speech, made mockery of what he termed 'the hypocrisies of political worship;' but estimating such things at their real value, the emperor regards them under relations more elevated, and conceives that in the eyes of the people they conduce to re- store to power the majesty and ascendancy which so many years of anarchy had destroyed. He grants, in truth, that their principal influence springs from the personal qualities of those invested with the supreme rule; but he maintains that, without equalling or superseding these qualities, cere- monial institutions may supply their place with advantage. In supporting such a system, Napoleon shews himself at least very disinterested; for who can stand less in need of appli- ances to impose upon men than one who seems born to govern? In proof of his argument, he adduces the example of a crowd of princes who have reigned, so to speak, rather seated or lying than standing upright, but whose couch, guarded by