and Modena, 35,000,000 from the Papal States, an equally large sum from Tuscany; one hundred finest horses of Lombardy to the five Directors, "to replace the sorry nags that now draw your carriages"; convoys of priceless manuscripts and sculpture and pictures to adorn the galleries of Paris. So persistent were these raids on the collections of art in Italy that Napoleon is known there to this day as _il gran ladrone_. The chief duty of the new French officials in Italy, said Lucien Bonaparte, is to supervise the packing of pictures and statues for Paris. No less than 5233 of these works of art were confiscated by the Allies in 1815, and returned to their former owners. In less than a decade the rusty old stage properties and the baubles of monarchy were furbished anew, sacred oil from the little phial of Rheims anointed the brow of a new dynast, and a Roman Pontiff blessed the crown with which a once poor, pensioned, disaffected Corsican patriot crowned himself lord of France in Notre Dame. The old pomposities of a court came strutting back to their places:--Arch Chancellors, Grand Electors, Constables, Grand Almoners, Grand Chamberlains, Grand Marshals of the Palace, Masters of the Horse, Masters of the Hounds, Madame Mère and a bevy of Imperial Highnesses with their ladies-in-waiting. Only one thing was wanting, as a Jacobin bitterly remarked--the million of men who were slain to end all that mummery. The fascinating story of how this amazing transformation was effected cannot be told here. The magician who wrought it was possessed of a soaring, visionary imagination, of a mental instrument of incomparable force and efficiency, of an iron will, a prodigious intellectual activity, and a piercing insight into the conditions of material success, rarely, if ever before, united in the same degree in one man. Napoleon Bonaparte was of ancient, patrician Florentine blood, and perchance the descendant of one of those of Fiesole-- "In cui riviva la sementa santa Di quei Romani che vi rimaser quando Fu fatto il nido di malizia tanta."[164] He cherished a particular affection for Italy, and, so far as his personal aims allowed, treated her generously. His descent into Lombardy awakened the slumbering sense of Italian nationality. In more senses than one, says Mr Bolton King, the historian of Italian unity, Napoleon was the founder of modern Italy.