"Whosoever has no tie left in life should come to live in Rome. There he will find for company a land which will feed his reflections and occupy his heart, and walks which will always say something to him. The stone which he treads under foot will speak to him; the dust which the wind raises beneath his steps will contain some human greatness. If he is unhappy, if he has mingled the ashes of those whom he loved with so many illustrious ashes, with what charm will he not pass from the sepulchre of the Scipios to the last resting-place of a virtuous friend!... If he is a Christian, ah! how can he then tear himself away from that land which has become his country, from that land which has witnessed the birth of a second empire, holier in its cradle, greater in its might than that which preceded it, from that land where the friends whom we have lost, sleeping with the martyrs in the catacombs, under the eye of the Father of the Faithful, appear as though they ought to be the first to awake in their dust and seem to be nearer to the skies?" But, in 1814, I was only a vulgar cicerone to Madame Récamier, the common property of all travellers; more fortunate in 1823, I had ceased to be a stranger to her and we were able to talk together of the Roman ruins. In Naples, where Madame Récamier went in the autumn[405], the occupations of solitude ceased. Scarce had she alighted at her inn, when King Joachim's ministers came hastening up. Murat, forgetting the hand which had changed his whip[406] into a sceptre, was ready to join the Coalition. Bonaparte had planted his sword in the middle of Europe, as the Gauls planted their blade in the middle of the _mallus_[407]; around Napoleon's sword were drawn up in a circle kingdoms which he distributed to his family. Caroline[408] had received that of Naples. Madame Murat was not so elegant an antique cameo as the Princess Borghese; but she had more expression and more wit than her sister. In the firmness of her character one recognised the blood of Napoleon. If the diadem had not been for her an ornament for a woman's head, it would still have been the emblem of a queen's power. [Sidenote: Queen Caroline Murat.]