ry occasion of intercourse with the citizens. Few general orders
could be more palatable to Frenchmen, and they set about the task of
cultivating the good esteem of the Viennese with a most honest desire
for success. Accident, too, aided their efforts not a little; for it
chanced that a short time before the battle of Aspern, the city had been
garrisoned by Croat and Wallachian regiments, whose officers, scarcely
half civilised, and with all the brutal ferocity of barbarian tribes,
were most favourably supplanted by Frenchmen in the best of possible
tempers with themselves and the world.

It might be argued, that the Austrians would have shown more patriotism
in holding themselves aloof, and avoiding all interchange of civilities
with their conquerors. Perhaps, too, this line of conduct would have
prevailed to a greater extent, had not those in high places set an
opposite example. But so it was; and in the hope of obtaining more
favourable treatment in their last extremity, the princes of the
Imperial House, and the highest nobles of the land, freely accepted the
invitations of our marshals, and as freely received them at their own
tables.

There was something of pride, too, in the way these great families
continued to keep up the splendour of their households--large retinues
of servants and gorgeous equipages--when the very empire itself was
crumbling to pieces. And to the costly expenditure of that fevered
interval may be dated the ruin of some of the richest of the Austrian
nobility. To maintain a corresponding style, and to receive the proud
guests with suitable magnificence, enormous 'allowances' were made to
the French generals; while in striking contrast to all the splendour,
the Emperor Napoleon lived at Schoenbrunn with a most simple household
and restricted retinue.

'Berthier's' Palace, in the 'Graben,' was, by its superior magnificence,
the recognised centre of French society; and thither flocked every
evening all that was most distinguished in rank of both nations. Motives
of policy, or at least the terrible pressure of necessity, filled these
salons with the highest personages of the empire; while as it accepting,
as inevitable, the glorious ascendency of Napoleon, many of the French
_emigre_ families emerged from their retirement to pay their court to
the favoured lieutenants of Napoleon. Marmont, who was highly connected
with the French aristocracy, gave no slight aid to this movement, and,
it was cur