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Updated: June 19, 2025
The door opened immediately; the Dukes de Bassano and Vicenza appeared on the threshold and reentered the room. "Well, have you heard every thing?" asked Napoleon. "Yes, sire." "And Fain? has he taken notes?" "Ah, I shall read it afterward," said the emperor; "it is always good to know in what manner we shall be recognized by posterity.
A person, whose name prudence forbids me mentioning, communicated to me the following letter, the original copy of which is in my possession: MONSIEUR LE DUC DE BASSANO I send you some very important documents respecting the Sieur Bourrienne, and beg you will make me a confidential report on this affair. Keep these documents for yourself alone. This business demands the utmost secrecy.
"The marine was not in high favor with the Emperor; and truly, my reception of these unfrequent visitors was anything but flattering. The early part of the morning was, as usual, occupied by the audience of the Minister of Police, and the Duc de Bassano, who evidently, from the length of time they remained, had matter of importance to communicate.
He established the duke of Bassano as governor of Lithuania, and as the centre of administrative, political, and even military communication between him, Europe, and the generals commanding the corps de armée which were not to follow him to Moscow. This ostensible inactivity of Napoleon at Wilna lasted twenty days.
"But after all," said the Emperor eagerly, "what is the opinion of the Duke of Bassano?" "Sire, the Duke of Bassano does not think that we can hold out twenty-four hours." "And you?" "I, Sire? I think that Dresden will be taken to-morrow if your Majesty is not there." "I can then rely upon what you tell me?" "Sire, I will answer for it with my head."
Before leaving Wilna, the Emperor established there a kind of central government, at the head of which he had placed the Duke of Bassano, with the object of having an intermediate point between France and the line of operations he intended to carry on in the interior of Russia.
Neither of these two officials was suited to organising the rear echelons of an army. The Duc de Bassano, a former diplomat and private secretary, knew nothing about administration, while the Dutchman Hogendorp, who spoke little French and had no idea of our military regulations and customs, was not likely to make much impression on those French who passed through Wilna or on the local nobility.
Can anything be more enjoyable, and at the same time more vividly true, than George Sand's delineations of Venice; and, in the first of the Lettres d'un Voyageur, the pictures given of her wanderings on the shores of the Brenta, of Bassano, the Brenta valley, Oliero, Possagno, Asolo, a delicious land, till quite recently as little tourist-trodden as in 1834?
The rumbling carriage, the old- time, rattling, red-velveted carriage of provincial, rural Italy, delightful and quaint, did the office of the gondola; to Bassano, to Treviso, to high-walled Castelfranco, all pink and gold, the home of the great Giorgione.
But at such hours I always repeat to myself, in order to justify our course, a few words from the letter which the Duke de Bassano addressed to our ambassador, Baron von Krusemark, as the ultimatum of the Tuileries. I have learned this letter by heart, and, if you will graciously permit me, I will repeat a few words."
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