, but disgraced, and perhaps punished, by a Louis XVIII. Any
person who would be imprudent enough to attempt to prove the
impossibility, as well as the absurdity, of these impolitic and
retrospective measures, would be instantly taken up and shot as an
emissary of the Bourbons.

I have often amused myself in conversing with our new generals and new
officers; there is such a curious mixture of ignorance and information,
of credulity and disbelief, of real boasting and affected modesty, in
everything they say or do in company; their manners are far from being
elegant, but also very distant from vulgarity; they do not resemble those
of what we formerly called 'gens comme il faut', and 'la bonne societe'!
nor those of the bourgeoisie, or the lower classes. They form a new
species of fashionables, and a 'haut ton militaire', which strikes a
person accustomed to Courts at first with surprise, and perhaps with
indignation; though, after a time, those of our sex, at last, become
reconciled, if not pleased with it, because there is a kind of military
frankness interwoven with the military roughness. Our ladies, however (I
mean those who have seen other Courts, or remember our other coteries),
complain loudly of this alteration of address, and of this fashionable
innovation; and pretend that our military, under the notion of being
frank, are rude, and by the negligence of their manners and language, are
not only offensive, but inattentive and indelicate. This is so much the
more provoking to them, as our Imperial courtiers and Imperial placemen
do not think themselves fashionable without imitating our military
gentry, who take Napoleon for their exclusive model and chief in
everything, even in manners.

What I have said above applies only to those officers whose parents are
not of the lowest class, or who entered so early or so young into the
army that they may be said to have been educated there, and as they
advanced, have assumed the 'ton' of their comrades of the same rank. I
was invited, some time ago, to a wedding, by a jeweller whose sister had
been my nurse, and whose daughter was to be married to a captain of
hussars quartered here. The bridegroom had engaged several other
officers to assist at the ceremony, and to partake of the fete and ball
that followed. A general of the name of Liebeau was also of the party,
and obtained the place of honour by the side of the bride's mother. At
his entrance into the apartment