is legs somewhat detracted when on foot. As
he rode up attired in full hunting costume, he might have seemed the
embodiment of triumphant strength. The Pope, on the other hand, clad in
white garments and with white silk shoes, gave an impression of peaceful
benevolence, had not his intellectual features borne signs of the
protracted anxieties of his pontificate. The Emperor threw himself from
his horse and advanced to meet his guest, who on his side alighted,
rather unwillingly, in the mud to give and receive the embrace of
welcome. Meanwhile Napoleon's carriage had been driven up: footmen were
holding open both doors, and an officer of the Court politely handed
Pius VII. to the left door, while the Emperor, entering by the right,
took the seat of honour, and thus settled once for all the vexed
question of social precedence.[315]

During the Pope's sojourn at Fontainebleau, Josephine breathed to him
her anxiety as to her marriage; it having been only a civil contract,
she feared its dissolution, and saw in the Pope's intervention a
chance of a firmer union with her consort. The pontiff comforted her
and required from Napoleon the due solemnization of his marriage; it
was therefore secretly performed by Napoleon's uncle, Cardinal Fesch,
two days before the coronation.[316]

It was not enough, however, that the successor of St. Peter should
grace the coronation with his presence: the Emperor sought to touch
the imagination of men by figuring as the successor of Charlemagne. We
here approach one of the most interesting experiments of the modern
world, which, if successful, would profoundly have altered the face of
Europe and the character of its States. Even in its failure it attests
Napoleon's vivid imagination and boundless mental resources. He
aspired to be more than Emperor of the French: he wished to make his
Empire a cosmopolitan realm, whose confines might rival those of the
Holy Roman Empire of one thousand years before, and embrace scores of
peoples in a grand, well-ordered European polity.

Already his dominions included a million of Germans in the Rhineland,
Italians of Piedmont, Genoa, and Nice, besides Savoyards, Genevese,
and Belgians. How potent would be his influence on the weltering chaos
of German and Italian States, if these much-divided peoples learnt to
look on him as the successor to the glories of Charlemagne! And this
honour he was now to claim. However delusive was the parallel between
the old s