nt, saw the
Emperor go up to a lady of the Court and address her thus: "This is
the same gown you wore the day before yesterday! What's the meaning
of this, madame? This is not right, madame!"

Josephine never gave him a similar cause of complaint, but even when
he was Emperor she often made him murmur at the profusion of her
expenditure under this head. The next anecdote will give some idea
of the quantity of dresses which she wore for a day or so, and then
gave away to her attendants, who appear to have carried on a very
active trade in them.

"While we were at Mayence the Palace was literally besieged by Jews,
who continually brought manufactured and other goods to show to the
followers of the Court; and we had the greatest difficulty to avoid
buying them. At last they proposed that we should barter with them;
and when Her Majesty had given us dresses that were far too rich for
us to wear ourselves, we exchanged them with the Jews for
piecegoods. The robes we thus bartered did not long remain in the
hands of the Jews, and there must have been a great demand for them
among the belles of Mayence, for I remember a ball there at which
the Empress might have seen all the ladies of a quadrille party
dressed in her cast-off clothes.--I even saw German Princesses
wearing them" (Memoires de Mademoiselle Avrillion).]

--on his way Cologne and Coblentz, which the emigration had rendered so
famous, and arrived at Mayence, where his sojourn was distinguished by the
first attempt at negotiation with the Holy See, in order to induce the
Pope to come to France to crown the new Emperor, and consolidate his
power by supporting it with the sanction of the Church. This journey of
Napoleon occupied three months, and he did not return to St. Cloud till
October. Amongst the flattering addresses which the Emperor received in
the course of his journey I cannot pass over unnoticed the speech of M.
de la Chaise, Prefect of Arras, who said, "God made Bonaparte, and then
rested." This occasioned Comte Louis de Narbonne, who was not yet
attached to the Imperial system, to remark "That it would have been well
had God rested a little sooner."

During the Emperor's absence a partial change took place in the Ministry.
M. de Champagny succeeded M. Chaptal as Minister of the Interior. At the
camp of Boulogne the pacific Joseph found himself, by his brother's
wish, transformed into a war