Talleyrand witnessed the last act in the drama of the Revolution when, on December 2nd (1804), the three Bonapartes and Josephine, preceded by Murat and twenty brilliant squadrons of cavalry, drove in a gorgeous chariot to the door of Notre Dame. Where reason and humanity had been enthroned a few years before, a glittering pageantry of Church and State now gathered about the altar for the coronation of a more absolute autocrat than Louis XVI. A Pope, convinced in his conscience of the utter impiety and immorality of Napoleon, solemnly intoned the “Veni, Creator Spiritus,” and received Napoleon’s profession of faith. In the interest of peace and of the Church, Pius VII stooped to acts that nearly broke his heart. And when the supreme moment came in which he was to crown Napoleon, and thus assert at length and for ever his own ascendancy, Napoleon snatched the crown from its cushion and put it on his own head. For several months the Pope and his ministers remained at Paris. Talleyrand speaks in the memoirs with great respect and sympathy of the Pope, and says that he refused any presents for his family and asked no advantage of a material kind for the Church. We know that he did press for the restoration of the temporal power, and was met with the mocking assurance that “Napoleon must keep what God has given him.” So Pius VII returned to Rome empty-handed, with a bitter consciousness of his futile sacrifices and compromises. CHAPTER XII THE RENEWAL OF WAR We have now to resume the story of work at the Foreign Office, and examine—in so far as Talleyrand figures in them—the complicated events that led to the resumption of hostilities in 1805. The peace with England had not even an illusory appearance of solidity. Napoleon described it as “a short armistice;” George III said it was “an experimental peace.” Napoleon was irritated when Talleyrand used to say that he would have been willing to leave Malta to the English if he could have had the treaty signed by Fox or Pitt instead of the less clear and resolute Addington. But whether or no Napoleon himself regarded the Peace of Amiens as a stage in the conquest of Europe, it undoubtedly presented itself in that light very shortly. Once clothed with the Imperial purple, the mantle of Charlemagne, Napoleon would see the splendid strategic position he occupied in Europe. We must go back a little, however, to understand clearly the negotiations in which Talleyrand was engaged before the second campaign against Austria.