When Marie Louise visited this famous village, the burgomaster, in view of the importance of the occasion, consented to break the rigid rules and to permit the Imperial carriage to drive over the mosaic pavement to his house, where he presented his respects to the Empress. At this house, as in every one in the village, there are two doors,--one for daily use, the other opened only for baptisms, marriages, and funerals. This door, which is called the fatal door, opens into a room which is always kept shut except on these three occasions. "The Empress," says M. de Bausset, "asked to have the fatal door opened. We crossed the threshold with gratified vanity, in the presence of many inhabitants, who feared to follow us, but who were almost tempted to admire the ease and courage with which we went in and out. After visiting, admiring, and praising everything, we left these worthy people delighted with the touching graces and amiable kindness of their young sovereign." The Emperor and Empress visited Saardam, where Peter the Great spent ten months as a workman, to study shipbuilding. Napoleon fell into meditation before the hut of the famous Czar, as he had done before the tomb of Frederick the Great. "That is the noblest monument in Holland!" he said; and in memory of Peter the Great he ordered Saardam to be made a city. Napoleon and Marie Louise also spent a few hours at Harlem, a half-Gothic, half-Japanese town, celebrated by the passion of its inhabitants for flowers, especially for tulips. October 26, they arrived at Rotterdam, at Loo on the 27th, and spent the night of the 28th at The Hague, whence they went to visit the banks of the Rhine. The Emperor carried away with him a most favorable impression of the Dutch, whose seriousness, morality, love of order, and industry had continually struck him, so that he shared his brother Louis's partiality for a nation as interesting in the present as in the past.