Note (Back to main text) — END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

Napoleon immediately received the congratulations of all the authorities, and of the tribunals. These congratulations began to be no longer a mark of attachment in our eyes, but the fulfilment of a duty. After having discoursed with them on the grand interests of the state, the Emperor, whose good humour was inexhaustible, began to joke about the court of Louis XVIII. "His court," said he, "has the air of that of King Dagobert: we see nothing in it but antiques; the women are old and frightfully ugly; there were no pretty women in it but mine, and those were so ill-treated, that they were obliged to desert it. All those people are made up of nothing but haughtiness and pride: I have been reproached with being proud; I was so to strangers; but never did any one see me suffer my chancellor to set one knee to the ground to receive my orders, or oblige my prefects and mayors to wait at table on my courtiers and dowagers[63]. They say, that the men about the court are little better than the women; and that, to distinguish them from my generals, whom I had covered with gold lace, they are dressed like beggars. My court, it is true, was superb: I was fond of magnificence; not for myself, a plain soldier's coat was sufficient for me; I was fond of it, because it encourages our manufactures: without magnificence there is no industry. I abolished at Lyons all that parchment nobility; it was never sensible of what it owed me: it was I that exalted it, by making counts and barons of my best generals. Nobility is a chimera; men are too enlightened to believe, that some among them are noble, others not: they all spring from the same stock; the only distinction is that of talents, and of services rendered the state: our laws know no others."