Nicolo d'Abati.

Alas! this splendid Fontainebleau, the gorgeous palace where Pope and
Emperor were then living in triumph, was later to be to both an accursed
spot. The Pope was to return to it a prisoner, maltreated though old,
though a priest, though the Vicar of Christ, and there the Emperor was to
drink the cup of humiliation, of despair, to the dregs. It was there that,
conquered, broken, betrayed by fortune, he was to sign his abdication. It
was there that he was to utter those heart-rending words: "It is right; I
receive what I have deserved. I wanted no statues, for I knew that there
was no safety in receiving them at any other hands than those of
posterity. A man to keep them while he lives, needs constant good fortune.
I think of France, which it is terrible to leave in this state, without
frontiers when it had such wide ones!--that is the bitterest of the
humiliations that overwhelm me. To leave France so small when I wished to
make it so great!" It was there that, overcome by immeasurable grief, the
conqueror of so many battles wished to seek in suicide a refuge from the
tortures of thought, and that he was to fail to find death, he who on the
battle-field had squandered so many lives. O mortals, ignorant of your own
fates, how happy you are not to have foreknowledge of them!




IV.

THE PREPARATIONS FOR THE CORONATION.


The Empress left Fontainebleau, Thursday, November 29, 1804, in company