After resting for two days at Düsseldorf, Napoleon and Marie Louise went on to Cologne, when they visited the Chapel of the Eleven Thousand Virgins, and a grand _Te Deum_ was sung in the famous Cathedral, They returned by Liège, Givet, Mézières, and Compiègne, reaching Saint Cloud after an absence of nearly three months,--the longest visit that the Emperor had made in the provinces of either the old or the new France. Everywhere he had met with the expression of two distinct but somewhat different sentiments: for the Empress, an affectionate respect; for himself, the sort of violent sensation that a man who is a living wonder always produces. XXIV. NAPOLEON AT THE HEIGHT OF HIS POWER. At the beginning of 1812 Napoleon had reached the height of his power. Before we watch his decline, it may be well to consider him at the summit of his fortune, in the fulness of his force, might, and glory. In his career there were two distinctly marked periods,--the democratic and the aristocratic. In the early days of the Empire the first one had not yet come to an end. The coins of that time still bore the stamp, "French Republic. Napoleon Emperor." He himself resembled Caesar rather than Charlemagne: he granted no hereditary titles, and associated with but few of the émigrés; he was still, in many ways, a man of the Revolution. In 1812, on the other hand, he had given his authority a sort of feudal character, and revived many points of resemblance with the Carlovingian epoch. Charlemagne had become his model, his ideal. The saviour of the Convention, the friend of the young Robespierre, was busily introducing much of the imperial and military splendor of the Middle Ages. The continental sovereigns treated him with so much consideration that he regarded himself as their superior rather than as an equal. He called them his brothers; but he thought that he was more than a brother--something like the head of a family of kings. The Kings of Bavaria, of Würtemberg, of Saxony, of Spain, of Naples, of Westphalia, who all owed their crowns to him, were indeed his subordinates. As the Princes of the Confederation of the Rhine, the vassals of their protector, they despatched their contingents to him with as much zeal and punctuality as if they had been plain prefects of the Empire.