The girl who faced Napoleon

2

2.

Along the stairs and the halls of the Quirinale Palace in Rome, there was a loud uproar. From every room, corridor and garden, it was possible to hear furniture falling, frenetic screams and curtains tearing.

There was a prodigious confusion.

For days, hundreds of porters had been moving silverware panels, removing tapestries, transplanting plants, changing positions to beds, paintings and decorations of any kind. Dozens of statues had been carried to the Palace on carriages in the last days: servants were occupied in unloading them, depositing in the courtyard and then organizing them in a thousand specific ways. Just to have them again reallocated the next day in a further different way.

Rome was in turmoil for the "Winner of Marengo's" arrival, as his supporters called Napoleon.

No one had ever seen him, this general Bonaparte, a soldier who had become an Emperor, servant and peacemaker of the Revolution. Everyone was willing to know him. The printers of Rome were clogged by the noblemen, which strove to be the first ones to have their invitations printed and their portraits made. All that stuff created for the hundreds of celebrations, dances, ceremonies and banquets that would be held in Emperor's honor, hoping to have such a precious host, even for a minute. Everything to spend an evening with the man who - as was rumored in the streets of Rome by the more blinkered-peasants - "is going to burn Wien!"

That was a happening that would excite lots of revolutionary Italians as well.

The greatest lords of Rome, in the meantime, were wasting their fortunes for the incredible arrival. They were getting used to Pope's absence, and few people complained about it. Moreover, and worst, too many seemed to have forgotten it...

The evening mass, organized by few faithful cardinals and some devout marquis and duchesse to pray for the health of His Holiness, was attended by less and less people. And the cardinals struggled to remind people that the king of Rome was not that uncouth and faithless French general. A savage "kings-slayer", as far as Romans called the whole French people at that time, could not be adored like a divinity!

It was the Pope, the king of Rome. Not Napoleon.

Nobody could forget it.

However, the people had difficulty to admit it, and not without shame. So Rome had changed king, and those who had always been "waiters of the Pope", were now getting ready to become Marshals of France or, at least, Emperor's Aide-de-camp.

Prince Borghese had offered all of his rooms to the imperial court, and had reserved for him and his wife only a few apartments, without any complaint. The same had done the Pamphili family, whose palace was now full of statues and tapestries, sumptuous gifts for the Emperor. The Piccolomini family was already attending French language lessons, taught by the best teachers; the Aldobrandini tricked their carriages out with a large gold-printed "N". And many others aristocrats had French clothes specifically made for their toilette, inspired by the Parisian fashion.

At the center of this apparatus, quite theatrical indeed, there was a man named Martial Daru, first Jacobean, now passionate regicide and Napoleonic. Nobody knew this ambiguous man. He was born from the quagmire of the revolution as a friend of The Mountain, re-adapted Girondin to save his head and only God knew how he would die. But he was esteemed by the Emperor, who had ordered him: "Get Rome ready for my arrival!"

And that was just what he had been doing for days, giving orders here and there, visiting Rome on a black coach, adorned with the gold-plated "N" that so much pleased the Romans but that so roughly hated the Austrians and the Spanish.

He visited churches, palaces and garrisons. Everything to meet princes and countesses who, happy or pretending to be so, confirmed with conviction: "Don't worry. We are all friends of yours! Long life to the Emperor!"

He, then, pompous and satisfied came out of those palaces. Fixing the cockade of the French Empire on his jacket, insolently smiling, he whispered with derision to the coachman, in a terrible Italian language: "Ah, these Romans! They have already forgotten of the Pope!"

But there was not such a complicity everywhere in Rome. Within the many faithful "Servants of the Emperor", there were also several brave "Servants of His Paternity".

As cardinal Galdini was.

All these pious souls, undoubtedly God would have one day rewarded them – or maybe the Pope himself would have done, if he'd come back – opposed to the arrival of the terrible Corsican. They were grieving and praying every night that God may save Rome from the disaster of the Napoleonic Empire, that didn't seem close to collapse at all, at that time.

Daru obviously didn't even imagine having such an opposition and, when he met Galdini, he was completely unaware of what was going on and of what that influential Cardinal had in his efficient mind.

That's why, while Daru was concentrated on several matters, such as not disappointing the Emperor, who had granted him a great consideration, he didn't absolutely care of demanding to Galdini whatever satisfied his ambitions. For him, that old cardinal was just no more than another aristocrat ready to bowing down in front of Bonaparte.