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At the same time, Cardinal Cambaceres and Cardinal Fesch, equally notorious for their excesses, were taken no notice of, except that they were laughed at in our Court circles.
I do not mean by this remark to throw any blame on the conferring those and other orders on Napoleon Bonaparte, or even on his brothers; I know it is usual, between legitimate Sovereigns in alliance, sometimes to exchange their knighthoods; but to debase royal orders so much as to present them to a Cambaceres, a Talleyrand, a Fouche, a Bernadotte, a Fesch, and other vile and criminal wretches, I do not deny to have excited my astonishment as well as my indignation.
Napoleon had already pardoned several of the principal actors in the great royalist conspiracy; and yet, though the four gentlemen were merely suspected of complicity, the Emperor, after a meeting of the Council of State, called the senator Malin, Fouche, Talleyrand, Cambaceres, Lebrun, and Dubois, prefect of police, into his cabinet.
Cambaceres immediately repaired to Malmaison, to submit these resolutions to Napoleon. To the amazement of all, he immediately and firmly rejected the second question. Energetically, he said "Whom would you have me appoint my successor? on brothers? But will France which has consented to be governed by Joseph or Lucien? Shall I nominate you consul, Cambceres? You? Dare you undertake such a task?
Surely the bell was not intended for you, and I cannot imagine it was intended for me: who then could it be for? " "What a stupid fellow that Landoire is!" said Bonaparte. "Yesterday, when Cambaceres was with me, I wanted you. Landoire did not come when I touched the bell. I thought it was broken, and ordered him to get it repaired.
The marshals of the Empire were enjoined to maintain a style corresponding to their exalted position; and the reports of the police were actually studied respecting such persons as lived in what was deemed a manner unbefitting their means of expense. Cambacérès and Fouché, Talleyrand and Murat, all maintained splendid establishments.
Cambaceres knew that Talleyrand had some reason at that period to be discontented with Joseph, and, therefore, asked his advice how to get made a Prince against the wishes of this Grand Elector.
Cambaceres, though before the Revolution a nobleman of a Parliamentary family, was so degraded and despised for his unnatural and beastly propensities, that to see him in the ranks of rebellion was not unexpected.
On this memorable day, after Cambaceres, in the name of the senate and of France, had addressed the first consul as the actual emperor, he turned to Josephine, who, with that unparalleled admixture of grandeur, grace, and tender womanly beauty, which were all so especially her own, was present at this audience at Napoleon's side.
"This is as it should be," said Bonaparte, when by 4,000,000 votes the Constitution was ratified by the people. "These three-headed governments are apt to be failures, particularly when two of the heads are worthless. Cambaceres makes a first-rate bottle-holder, and Lebrun is a competent stenographer, but as for directing France in the line of her destiny they are of no use.
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