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Updated: June 3, 2025
M. de Bausset says that a week before the coronation the Emperor commanded of the artist Isabey seven drawings representing the seven principal ceremonies to take place at Notre Dame, which, however, could not be rehearsed in the Cathedral on account of the number of workmen busy day and night in decorating it.
In vain did Josephine sink down at his feet with heart-rending cries that she would never survive the disgrace: failing to calm her himself, he opened the door and summoned the prefect of the palace, Bausset, and bade him bear her away to her private apartments.
Flames speedily burst forth, and Bausset, the Prefect of Napoleon's Palace, affirms that while looking forth from the Kremlin he saw the flames burst forth in several districts in quick succession; and that a careful examination of cellars often proved them to be stored with combustibles, vitriol in one case being swallowed by a French soldier who took it for brandy!
Down the narrow stairs she was borne, the Emperor lifting her feet and Bausset supporting her shoulders, until, half fainting, she was left to the sympathies of her women and the attentions of Corvisart. But hers was a wound that no sympathy or skill could cure. On his side, Napoleon felt the wrench.
When Bausset sought to soothe him by remarking that France would still form one of the finest of realms, he replied: "with remarkable serenity 'I abdicate and I yield nothing." The words hide a world of meaning: they inclose the secret of the Hundred Days.
A prefect of the palace, M. de Bausset, wrote: "When I recall the memorable times of which I have just given a faint idea, I feel, after so many years, as if I had been taking part in the gorgeous scenes of the Arabian Tales or of the Thousand and One Nights. The magic picture of all those splendors and glories has disappeared, and with it all the prestige of ambition and power."
M. de Bausset, an eye-witness of the ceremony, tells us in his Memoirs: "I was naturally anxious to see the Empress as soon as she should reach the middle room to take a place on the throne, and give her courtiers time to arrange themselves about her, before we were introduced. I had brought a gimlet, and with this I had bored a good many holes in the door of our room.
"I had the honor," says M. de Bausset, "to be in the carriage with Mesdames de Montmorency and de Montemart and the Bishop of Metz. It seemed to me that these ladies were more contented than I was to leave the excellent dinner which was awaiting us there." Soissons, which had made many expensive preparations, had no return for its money and trouble.
As was of reason, since hers was the first place in the matter, Madame Jolicoeur herself carried on debatings in the portion of her heart that had escaped complete devastation identical in essence with the debatings of her case which went up and down the Rue Bausset.
"I pass over the ceremonies of etiquette," says the Baron de Bausset, who took part in these so-called rejoicings; "they are the same at every court.
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