rted 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.

Already, after a sojourn at Boulogne, he had visited Aix-la-Chapelle,
the city where Charlemagne's relics are entombed, and where Victor
Hugo in some of his sublimest verse has pictured Charles V. kneeling
in prayer to catch the spirit of the mediaeval hero. Thither went
Napoleon, but in no suppliant mood; for when Josephine was offered the
arm-bones of the great dead, she also proudly replied that she would
not deprive the city of that precious relic, especially as she had the
support of an arm as great as that of Charlemagne.[317] The insignia
and the sword of that monarch were now brought to Paris, and shed on
the ceremony of coronation that historic gleam which was needed to
redeem it from tawdry co