In this contemptuous manner did the restorer of religion speak of the power he intended to restore.
It is, therefore, not altogether surprising that, as in the case of a similar attempt made by Julian the Apostate 1500 years before, laughter, sometimes only dreaded, sometimes actual, was the inseparable adjunct of each step taken towards the reinstitution of the old religion. When Bonaparte read Pius VII.'s first brief at a Council of State, the brief in which the Pope intimates that he takes "his dear son Talleyrand" into favour again, sounds of half-stifled laughter were heard among the audience. Even Bonaparte himself was not always able to preserve his gravity. On the day when Cardinal Consalvi, apparelled in Roman purple, publicly presented him with a copy of the Concordat, the First Consul was suddenly seized with a convulsive fit of laughter which struck the whole assembly with consternation. And some years later than this he was still so little edified by religious rites, and so unable to control his countenance during their performance--he who as a rule showed himself a master in the art--that when the Pope was anointing him Emperor in 1804 he scandalised the spectators by yawning incessantly during the whole ceremony. Charles X., true Bourbon as he was, showed the proper seriousness when his turn came in 1825. With unmoved countenance, without the shadow of a smile, he allowed himself to be stripped to the waist and anointed, first on the head, then on breast, back, and arms.
Everything connected with the restoration of priestly authority and the reinstitution of Catholic worship was so utterly at variance with the customs and ideas which had prevailed in France since the Revolution that the witnesses of such rites could hardly believe their own eyes; they could not persuade themselves to take them seriously. In proof of this let me quote the words of such an eye-witness, De Pradt, Archbishop of Malines. He says: "If one single individual, by laughing, had given the signal, there would have been a perfectly inextinguishable Homeric outburst. This was the reef on which it was possible that everything might be wrecked. Fortunately Fouché, the Chief of Police, had taken the proper precautions, and, thanks to him, Paris kept a serious face."[3]