Over and above this positive and real service obtained from the
sovereign pontiff, he awaits others yet more important and undefined,
and principally his future coronation in Notre Dame. Already, during
the negotiations for the Concordat, La Fayette had observed to him
with a smile:[33] "You want the holy oil dropped on your head"; to
which he made no contradictory answer. On the contrary, he replied,
and probably too with a smile: "We shall see! We shall see!" Thus
does he think ahead, and his ideas extend beyond that which a man
belonging to the ancient r?gime could imagine or divine, even to the
reconstruction of the empire of the west as this existed in the year
800. "I am not Louis XIV.'s successor," he soon declares,[34] "but of
Charlemagne. . . . I am Charlemagne, because, like Charlemagne, I
unite the French crown to that of the Lombards, and my empire borders
on the Orient." In this conception, which a remote history furnishes
to his boundless ambition, the terrible antiquitarian finds the
gigantic and suitable framework, the potent, specious terms, and all
the verbal reasons he requires.
Pages:
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53