and the Empress have just resolved not to come here to-night, His Majesty being engaged by some unexpected business, and the Empress not wishing to come without her consort.”  In ten minutes the chapel was emptied of every person but the guards, the priests, and three old women who had nowhere else to pass an hour.  At the arrival of our Sovereigns, they were astonished at the unusual vacancy, and indignantly regarded each other.  After vespers were over, one of Bonaparte’s spies informed him of the cause, when, instead of punishing the despicable and hypocritical courtiers, or showing them any signs of his displeasure, he ordered Salmatoris under arrest, who would have experienced a complete disgrace had not his friend Duroc interfered and made his peace.

At another time, on a Sunday, Fouche entered the chapel in the midst of the service, and whispered to Bonaparte, who immediately beckoned to his lord-in-waiting and to Duroc.  These both left the Imperial chapel, and returning in a few minutes at the head of five grenadiers, entered the grand gallery, generally frequented by the most scrupulous devotees, and seized every book.  The cause of this domiciliary visit was an anonymous communication received by the Minister of Police, stating that libels against the Imperial family, bound in the form of Prayer-books, had been placed there.  No such libels were, however, found; but of one hundred and sixty pretended breviaries, twenty-eight were volumes of novels, sixteen were poems, and eleven were indecent books.  It is not necessary to add that the proprietors of these edifying works never reclaimed them.  The opinions are divided here, whether this curious discovery originated in the malice of Fouche, or whether Talleyrand took this method of duping his rival, and at the same time of gratifying his own malignity.  Certain it is that Fouche was severely reprimanded for the transaction, and that Bonaparte was highly offended at the disclosure.

The common people, and the middle classes, are neither so ostentatiously devout, nor so basely perverse.  They go to church as to the play, to gape at others, or to be stared at themselves; to pass the time, and to admire the show; and they do not conceal that such is the object of their attendance.  Their indifference about futurity equals their ignorance of religious duties.  Our revolutionary charlatans have as much brutalized their understanding as corrupted their hearts.  They heard the Grand Mass said by the Pope with the same feelings as they formerly heard Robespierre proclaim himself a high priest of a Supreme Being; and they looked at the Imperial processions with the same insensibility as they once saw the daily caravans of victims passing for execution.

Even in Bonaparte’s own guard, and among the officers of his household troops, several examples of rigour were necessary before they would go to any place of worship, or suffer in their corps any almoners; but now, after being drilled into a belief of Christianity, they march to the Mass as to a parade or to a review.  With any other people, Bonaparte would not so easily have changed in two years the customs of twelve, and forced military men to kneel before priests, whom they but the other day were encouraged to hunt and massacre like wild beasts.