Imbert de Saint-Amand

“ Devoted subjects, let us crowd to the feet of our well-loved sovereign, let us recognize in him the model of honor, the living principle of our laws, the soul of our monarchical society; let us bless a guardian heredity, and may legitimacy without pangs give birth to a new King! Let our soldiers cover with their flags the father of the Duke of Angouleme. May watchful Europe, may the factions, if such there be still, see in the accord of all Frenchmen, in the union of the people and the army, the pledge of our strength and of the peace of the world! ”

“ It excites minds in Stockholm almost as much as in Paris. Among the Swedes there are people whose greatest desire would be to parody the October Days, and to carry about on pikes the bleeding heads of their adversaries. The new ideas take fire and spread like a train of gunpowder. It is the fashion to go to extremes; a nameless frenzy and fatality seem let loose upon this epoch of agitations and catastrophes. All those who, at one time or another, have been guests at the palace of Versailles, are condemned, as by a mysterious sentence, either to exile or to death. ”

“ What a solemn mystery surrounds human life! What a painful surprise it would have been, if beyond this scene of power and greatness, one could have seen the ruin, the blood, the flames of Moscow, the ice of the Beresina and Leipsic, Fontainebleau, Elba, Saint Helena, and finally the death of this prince at the age of twenty, in exile, without one of the crowns he wore that day upon his head, and the many revolutions once more to raise his family after overthrowing it! What a blessing that the future is hidden from man! ”

“ To die or to grow old, that is the terrible dilemma from which they are unable to extricate themselves. Women whose attractions have not been more than ordinary bend to this common law with sufficient resignation. But the celebrated beauty, the haughty beauty who delights in herself as if her youth were never to end, secretly revolts against cruel destiny and silently endures a real martyrdom. Her shrivelled hand tries to retain the sceptre that is slipping from it. She is unwilling to descend from the throne whence she has been used to survey a crowd of servile adorers. ”

“ In vain has Lamartine, the founder of the Second Republic, exclaimed in a burst of noble wrath: "Has human speech an execration, an anathema, which is equal to the horror these crimes of cannibals inspire in me, as in all civilized men?" In vain have the most celebrated historians of democracy, Edgar Quinet and Michelet, expressed in eloquent terms their indignation against these crimes. In vain has M. Louis Blanc said: "Every murder is a suicide. In the victim the body alone is killed; but what is killed in the murderer is the soul." ”

“ A hotly contested victory is more agreeable to them than one too easily gained. Fortune is, in their eyes, a difficult mistress, whose favors seem the dearer, the harder they are of attainment. What a satisfaction for a proud man to be absolute commander of an army which, before the fight, shouts like the ancient gladiators: Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutant! "Hail, Caesar, those about to die salute you!" an army in which even dying men shout applause, with their last breath, to their sovereign, their idol! And yet how petty is all this glory! ”

“ At the sight of this youth, who gave calm expression to unrelenting hatred, Napoleon—who did not venture to spare his life, although no criminal act had been committed—was moved by a painful feeling in which pity was mingled with surprise. He who had cost Germany such torrents of blood and tears was singularly astonished when at last he saw that Germany did not love him. Nothing is so repugnant to the great of the earth, and especially to conquerors, as the thought of death,—death, the only unconquerable foe! ”

“ What one of us would not confide to him his life, his fortune, his honor? The man whom we should all wish as a friend, we have as King. Ah! Let us try to make him forget the sacrifices of his life! May the crown weigh lightly on the white head of this Christian Knight! Pious as Saint Louis, affable, compassionate, and just as Louis XII., courtly as Francis I., frank as Henry IV., may he be happy with all the happiness he has missed in his long past! May the throne where so many monarchs have encountered tempests, be for him a place of repose! ”

“ The great crime of the Jesuits was to have displeased the Marquise de Pompadour. One saw holy missionaries, untiring apostles, illustrious professors, men who had honored religion and science, old men surrounded by the esteem of all honest people, driven from their houses, deprived of all resources, expelled from France with a rigor and injustice so cruel that certain philosophers thought they could take up their defence in the name of humanity. ”

“ Why have you quitted these honest people? What have you come to do in the midst of these ferocious Jacobins, who flatter you to-day and will assassinate you to-morrow? Do you fancy that Marie Antoinette is the only woman who will be insulted, calumniated, and betrayed? Why do you seat at your hospitable table this livid-faced Robespierre, who to-day, perhaps, will address you a madrigal, and to-morrow send you to the scaffold? ”

“ Josephine had no more illusions. It was in vain that Napoleon spoke to her kindly, and tried to console her with kisses and even tears, —for Napoleon used to cry sometimes,—after Fouché had made his overtures she had no more peace of mind. The end of the stay at Fontainebleau was very gloomy. All became tired of this life of empty show, of the perpetual constraint, of the pleasures which by dint of repetition became dull and monotonous. Every one longed for home, to escape from this master's glances; for his presence inspired an admiration tempered with dread. ”

“ Could that gorgeous state carriage drive from her mind the memory of the martyred queen's tumbrel? And when Marie Louise first saw the Tuileries, must she not have thought of the last glance which that queen, her near relation, cast on that fateful palace before she bowed her August and charming head upon the block? All the flattery and homage of courtiers, the hymns of poets, the marriage songs, the whole chorus of adulation, cannot drown the inexorable lamentations of the voice of history! ”

“ Here is a sovereign privileged by destiny, handsome, powerful, victorious, surrounded by general admiration, possessor of the first throne of the universe, loved almost to idolatry by his people, having a tender and devoted wife, good and respectful children, soldiers who long to die bravely in his service to the cry of, “Long live the King!” He dwells in splendid palaces; when he pleases, he shakes off the yoke of etiquette and lives like a private gentleman in little residences which are masterpieces of grace and good taste; every one seeks to divine his wishes, his caprices ”

“ Is not the Church of Saint-Denis itself a funeral discourse in stone more grandiose and eloquent than that of the reverend orator? Regard on either side of the nave these superb mausoleums, these pompous tombs that are but an empty show, and since their dead dwell not in them, contemplate these columns that seem to wish to bear to heaven the splendid testimony of our nothingness! ”

“ A palace is not built for ease. All its formalities hang heavy on every guest; the whole of every day is spent in playing a part.
Amid all these empty pleasures and hollow joys there was no lack of sorrow. It was there that the wretched Queen Hortense, spitting blood, mourning the past and dreading the future, said to Napoleon: "My reputation is tainted, my health ruined, I expect no more happiness in life; banish me from your court; if you wish, lock me up in a convent, I desire neither throne nor fortune. ”

“ There are places which, by the very souvenirs they evoke, seem fatal and accursed. Such was the dungeon that was to serve as a prison for Louis XVI. and his family. The great tower for which Marie Antoinette had felt a nameless instinctive repugnance in the happiest days of her reign, arose at the extremity of Paris like a gigantic phantom, and recalled in a sinister fashion the tragedies of the Middle Ages and the sombre legends of the Templars. ”

“ Of what use then were luxury and splendor to her? The Marquise was greeted by adulations in all her châteaux, all her houses. Nowhere did she find esteem. To tell the truth, all this array of factitious grandeur, all this pretence at decorum, was but a parody. Do what she might, the mistress of Louis XV. was in reality nothing but the first kept woman in the kingdom. Loaded and overwhelmed with proofs of royal munificence, she never called herself satisfied; ambition, like sensual pleasure, is insatiable. The love of money and the love of flattery never say: “It is enough!” ”

“ Every one who sees you, sees in your eyes
A darkened ray of heavenly splendor."
And, indeed, every one recognized in him a really extraordinary being; his face, his gestures, his bearing, all had an imperial air. He seemed born to rule in a drawing-room as well as in a barracks. He was admired as well as loved; he was a true son of Caesar, born for success in love as well as for glory. When he appeared in the ball-room, his pale coloring, his lively expression, his military bearing, his proud but quiet manners, the mingled energy and gentleness of his face, attracted every woman's eye. ”

“ To celebrate the day of August 10, which overthrew the throne, the pompous mausoleums must be destroyed upon its anniversary. Under the Monarchy, the very tombs were taught to flatter kings. Royal pride and luxury could not be moderated even on this theatre of death, and the bearers of the sceptre who had brought such ills on France and on humanity seemed even in the grave to vaunt a vanished splendor. The strong hand of the Republic should pitilessly efface these haughty epitaphs, and demolish these mausoleums which might recall the frightful memory of kings. ”

“ If you groan, the world scoffs at you. Your afflictions obtain scorn and not compassion. You cannot confess your sorrow before either God or men. The being who persecutes and outrages you, who betrays and kills you, is still beloved, and this love, alas! is only a folly, a weakness. You humble yourself, you crawl, you cringe. And all that avails you nothing. Your cause is lost. Nothing is left you but to suffer and to die.
Such was the destiny of Madame de Mailly. ”

“ She who knew so well how to love and how to hate, who felt so keenly, who had so much energy, so much vigor, what fascination must she not have exerted with her glance of fire, her long black tresses, her more than ornate eloquence, her inspired, lyric, enthusiastic bearing, and that consummate art which, according to the remark of Fontanes, made one believe that in her everything was the work of nature! ”

“ Vanity of human events! What has become of these drawing-rooms of the Tuileries, which it was such an honor to enter, which were trod with such respectful awe? Look at the lamentable ruins of this ill-fated palace. There may still be seen, blackened with petroleum and stained by the rain, some of those drawing-rooms, once so brilliant, once thronged with an eager and showy crowd. What an instructive spectacle! When is one more urgently reminded of the emptiness of human glory and greatness? ”

“ With a more delicate figure she became more graceful, and no woman ever had a finer complexion. Being endowed with a most sturdy constitution, she owed all her beauty to nature and nothing to artifice; her face needed no paint, her wit no coquetry; with no fondness for luxury or dress, possessing simple and quiet tastes, never striving for effect, always preferring half-tints to a blaze of light, her expression and demeanor always had a quality of simplicity and directness which fascinated Napoleon, who was very glad to turn from experienced coquettes to a really natural person. ”

“ Happy the new Queen, if her presence shall deliver Spain from the factions that still divide it, and if, finding beyond the mountains the same order, devotion, prosperity, as in our provinces, she can cry, 'There are no longer any Pyrenees.'"
The Duchess of Berry had not found the inclinations of the south less royalist than that of La Vendee. Everywhere protestations were made to her, verging on lyrism, on idolatry; the idea of suspecting such demonstrations never crossed her mind. She persuaded herself that France loved her as much as she loved France. ”

“ The last days of his life, his presentiments, which recall those of Cæsar, his superstitions, his belief in prophecies, his magic incantations, that warning which he scorns, as the Duke de Guise did at the castle of Blois, that masked ball where the costumes, the music, the flowers, the lights, offer a painfully strange contrast to the horror of the attack; all is sinister, lugubrious, in these fantastic and fatal scenes which have already tempted more than one dramatist, more than one musician, and whose phases a Shakespeare only could retrace. ”

“ The woman who longs most to preserve her illusions concerning the perpetuity of her youth, finds warning accusations which afflict and terrify her. The first wrinkles, the first gray hairs; the color which needs to be touched up, the lips and eyes which call imperiously for paint; the insolent mirror which nevertheless one cannot break because it is in opposition to the flatterers, because in its mute language it brutally declares the truth! ”

“ They defeat the enemy, not merely without feeling, but with a fierce joy, as if it were their prey. They feel the same emotions as the Romans in a circus, or the Spaniards at a bull-fight. The rattle of drums, the blare of trumpets, shouts of soldiers, are what they hear; their ears are deaf to the cries of the wounded and dying. The varying chances of the combat, the uncertainties of fear and hope produce in them emotions that they prefer to all others, however poetic and charming. It is with a sort of intoxication that they inhale the smell of gunpowder, perhaps even that of blood. ”

“ Some days before the coronation, which excited the curiosity of all Europe, the city of Rheims was filled with a crowd of tourists. The streets and promenades of the city, usually so quiet, presented an extraordinary animation. There had been constructed a bazaar, tents, cafes, places for public games, and at the gates of the city there was a camp of ten thousand men. To visit this camp was a favorite excursion for the people and for strangers. The soldiers assembled each evening before their tents and sang hymns to the sovereign and the glory of the French arms. ”

“ For two years nothing but flattery, homage, applause, music, triumphal arches, magnificence, splendid festivities; and, after all, how poor and empty it all was!
So far from her husband, her guide and protector, Marie Louise felt alone and strange in the grand palace of Saint Cloud. It was then that she began to suffer from those attacks of homesickness which made her long for the neighborhood of Vienna. Up to that day there had been nothing but fairy-like splendor; the young sovereign had seen only the brilliant side of the Empire. ”

“ Everywhere people are laughing, drinking, killing. The royal wine runs in streams. Torrents of wine, torrents of blood. The apartments, the staircase, the vestibule, are crimson pools. Disfigured corpses, pictures thrust through with pikes, musicians' stands thrown on the altar, the organ dismounted, broken,—that is how the chapel looks. But to rob and murder is not enough: they will kindle a conflagration. It devours the stables of the mounted guards, all the buildings in the courts, the house of the governor of the palace: eighteen hundred yards of barracks, huts, and houses. ”

“ Never was there a more brilliant triumph. "I have fought thirty battles like that," said the conqueror, "but I have never seen so decisive a victory, or one where the chances were so unevenly balanced." And then full of admiration for his soldiers, he exclaimed; "I am satisfied with you; you have covered your eagles with undying glory."
From a military point of view Austerlitz was Napoleon's greatest triumph. War, which he loved with all its risks and emotions, then showed him its most tempting side. He was always tempting fate, and fate had always favored him. ”