iece and of the winged Victorys, talked suitably
of Napoleon as an organizer and administrator, and placed him in a high
position as president of the state council, where his words threw light
upon obscure questions. Garain affirmed that in his sessions, only too
famous, Napoleon, under pretext of taking snuff, asked the councillors to
pass to him their gold boxes ornamented with miniatures and decked with
diamonds, which they never saw again. The anecdote was told to him by the
son of Mounier himself.

Montessuy esteemed in Napoleon the genius of order. "He liked," he said,
"work well done. That is a taste most persons have lost."

The painter Duviquet, whose ideas were those of an artist, was
embarrassed. He did not find on the funeral mask brought from St. Helena
the characteristics of that face, beautiful and powerful, which medals
and busts have consecrated. One must be convinced of this now that the
bronze of that mask was hanging in all the old shops, among eagles and
sphinxes made of gilded wood. And, according to him, since the true face
of Napoleon was not that of the ideal Napoleon, his real soul may not
have been as idealists fancied it. Perhaps it was the soul of a good
bourgeois. Somebody had said this, and he was inclined to think that it
was true. Anyway, Duviquet, who flattered himself with having made the
best portraits of the century, knew that celebrated men seldom resemble
the ideas one forms of them.

M. Daniel Salomon observed that the fine mask about which Duviquet
talked, the plaster cast taken from the inanimate face of the Emperor,
and brought to Europe by Dr. Antommarchi, had been moulded in bronze and
sold by subscription for the first time in 1833, under Louis Philippe,
and had then inspired surprise and mistrust. People suspected the Italian
chemist, who was a sort of buffoon, always talkative and famished, of
having tried to make fun of people. Disciples of Dr. Gall, whose system
was then in favor, regarded the mask as suspicious. They did not find in
it the bumps of genius; and the forehead, examined in accordance with the
master's theories, presented nothing remarkable in its formation.

"Precisely," said Princess Seniavine. "Napoleon was remarkable only for
having kicked Volney in the stomach and stealing a snuffbox ornamented
with diamonds. Monsieur Garain has just taught us."

"And yet," said Madame Martin, "nobody is sure that he kicked Volney."

"Everything becomes known in th