required extraordinary magnificence, prodigious effects, Babylonian
festivities, gigantic adventures, colossal victories. His Imperial
escutcheon, to escape contempt, needed rich coats of gilding, and demanded
glory to make up for the lack of antiquity. In order to make himself
acceptable to the European, monarchs, his new brothers, and to remove the
memory of the venerable titles of the Bourbons, this former officer of the
armies of Louis XVI., the former second-lieutenant of artillery, who had
suddenly become a Caesar, a Charlemagne, could make this sudden and
strange transformation comprehensible only through unprecedented fame and
splendor. He desired to have a feudal, majestic court, surrounded by all
the pomp and ceremony of the Middle Ages. He saw how hard was the part he
had to play, and he knew very well how much a nation needs glory to make
it forget liberty. Hence a perpetual effort to make every day outshine the
one before, and first to equal, then to surpass, the splendors of the
oldest and most famous dynasties. This insatiable thirst for action and
for renown was to be the source of Napoleon's strength and also of his
weakness. But only a few clear-sighted men made these reflections when the
Empire began. The masses, with their easy optimism, looked upon the new
Emperor as an infallibly impeccable being, and thought that since he had
not yet been beaten, he was invincible. Josephine indulged in no such
illusions; she knew the defects in her husband's character, and dreaded
the future for him as well as for herself. Singularly enough for one so
surrounded by flatteries, in her whole life her head was never for a
moment turned by pride or infatuation.




II.