When the Emperor was passing his troops in review in the square, Bernardino Renier pointed out his cousin Giustina, who was in the crowd looking on, and Napoleon at once sent two officers to bring her to him. The story is that the Emperor planted himself before her with his arms crossed and his legs apart. ‘What are you celebrated for?’ he asked roughly. ‘I, sire? Celebrated?’ cried the lady. ‘Yes, you. But to what do you owe your celebrity?’ ‘To friendship, no doubt, which attributes to me an importance I do not possess.’ ‘What have you written?’ demanded the Emperor. ‘Little things not worth mentioning,’ answered Giustina. ‘Verse or prose?’ ‘In prose, sire. I never was able to write a verse in my life.’ ‘Ah, then you improvise, you improvise, do you?’ ‘I wish I could, sire! for I should have an excellent opportunity to-day of covering myself with glory!’ ‘Come, what have you written?’ asked the Emperor impatiently. ‘A few translations.’ [Illustration: A NARROW STREET, NEAR THE ACADEMY] ‘Translations?’ ‘Of tragedies,’ answered Giustina. ‘The tragedies of Racine, I suppose?’ ‘I beg your majesty’s pardon, I have translated from the English.’ The eye-witnesses of this meeting say that when the Emperor received this answer he turned on his heel and left the high-born lady standing there. The final state of Giustina’s mind was somewhat contradictory, for her frankly democratic dreams had faded away, yet there remained an unlimited indulgence for the most contradictory opinions which were sometimes expressed in her presence, together with the greatest indignation against those who judged Venice by modern standards, whether they were Venetians or foreigners. She seemed to make it her duty to prevent anything from disturbing the ghost of the defunct Republic. When Chateaubriand made his first visit to Venice [Sidenote: _1806._] he had the bad taste to write an article in the _Mercure de France_, from which I translate a few extracts:--