When aim had been taken at him,çoisRené at the moment of the fire, he said:
He fell, holding in his hands the portraits of his wife and of his children: those portraits used before to adorn the hilt of his sword[465]. It was but one affair the more which the gallant man had settled with life.
The different manners of death of Napoleon and Murat preserve the characters of their lives.
Murat, so magnificent, was buried without state at Pizzo, in one of those Christian churches in whose charitable bosom all ashes are mercifully received.
Madame Récamier, returning to France, passed through Rome at the moment when the Pope returned[466]. In another portion of these Memoirs, you accompanied Pius VII., set at liberty at Fontainebleau, to the gates of St Peter's[467]. Joachim, still alive, was about to disappear, and Pius VII. was reappearing. Behind them, Napoleon was struck; the conqueror's hand let the King fall and raised the Pontiff.
Pius VII. was received with shouts which shook the ruins of the city of ruins. The horses were taken from his carriage and the crowd drew him to the steps of the Church of the Apostles. The Holy Father saw nothing, heard nothing; rapt in mind, his thought was far from the earth; only his hand rose over the people from the tender habit of blessing. He entered the basilica to the sound of trumpets, to the singing of the _Te Deum_, to the acclamations of the Swiss of the religion of William Tell. The thuribles wafted perfumes to him which he did not inhale; he would not be carried on the _sedia gestatoria_ under the shadow of the canopy and the palms; he walked like a shipwrecked man fulfilling his vow to Our Lady of Succour, and charged by Christ with a mission which was to renew the face of the earth. He was clad in a white robe; his hair, which had remained black in spite of misfortune and years, formed a contrast with the anchorite's pallor. On arriving at the Tomb of the Apostles, he prostrated himself: he remained, without movement and as though dead, plunged in the depths of the counsels of Providence. The emotion was profound; Protestants who witnessed the scene wept scalding tears.
What a subject for meditation! An infirm, decrepit priest, strengthless, defenseless, taken from the Quirinal, carried captive to the heart of Gaul; a martyr, who awaited naught save his tomb, delivered from the hands of Napoleon, who pressed the globe, resuming the empire of an indestructible world, when the walls of a prison beyond the seas were being prepared for that formidable gaoler of the nations and the kings!