was slightly flushed with the hunt and the consciousness that he was master of the situation, and his form on horseback gained a dignity from which the shortness of his 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 semi-tribal polity and modern States where the peoples were awakening to a sense of their nationality, Napoleon was now in a position to clear the way for his great experiment.  He had two charms wherewith to work, material prosperity and his gift of touching the popular imagination.  The former of these was already silently working in his favour:  the latter was first essayed at the coronation.