ormer green
one, in sign of mourning, gave rise to many difficulties and
altercations. In the midst of the Palais-Royal a republican received a
bullet point-blank in his chest in return for an insult. Another,
meeting one of these _collets noirs_, said to him: "B . . . of a Chouan,
for whom dost thou wear mourning?" "For thee!" replied the other, and
blew out his brains. When Napoleon came into power, there arose that
misdirected imitation of the antique known as the style of the Empire,
with a great display of jewelry on the costumes of both men and women;
"the aristocracy of the French Empire presented a revival of the
ostentatious patricians of Rome under the Caesars. The toilettes
displayed were rich and magnificent, but it must be said that they were
in bad taste."

The contempt which the members of the somewhat effete aristocracy of the
_ancien regime_ manifested, even down to the period of the Second
Empire, for the virile and fire-new nobility of Napoleon's family,
generals and marshals, was generally as puerile as it was unpatriotic,
but the latter only too frequently presented subject for sarcasm. In one
of the most recent of the many Napoleonic memoirs, those of the Comtesse
Potocka, this lively Polish lady describes the great personages who
surrounded the Emperor in the winter of 1806-1807, at Warsaw: Murat,
parading himself in the salons "with the majestic air of a comedian
assuming the role of a king;" the young Prince Borghese, "who, in the
brief intervals when the conversation became _a little_ serious, went
off to get some chairs, arranged them in pairs in the middle of the
salon, and amused himself by dancing contra-dances with these silent
partners, humming to himself." Three years later, in Paris, Madame
Potocka saw the new Empress, Marie-Louise, whose dull countenance and
German accent sufficiently accounted for her personal unpopularity.

Napoleon, who did not hesitate to qualify contemptuously the public
opinion of Paris when it was adverse to him, was not above the ancient
"bread and circus" methods of the Roman emperors at times. On the
occasion of the celebration of his coronation, there were distributed to
the populace thirteen thousand poultry, bread, and wine ran freely in
the public squares, so that the streets echoed to this cheerful refrain:

"_Vive, vive Napoleon,
Qui nous baille
D' la volaille,
Du pain et du vin a foison.
Vive, vive Napoleon!_"

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