Beranger’s father reappeared suddenly during the Directory and reclaimed his son, whom he carried to Paris.  The father had formed connections in Brittany with the royalists.  He had become steward of the household of the Countess of Bourmont, mother of the famous Bourmont who was afterwards Marshal of France and Minister of War.  Bourmont himself, then young, was living in Paris, in order the better to conspire for the restoration of the Bourbons.  The elder Beranger was neck-deep in these intrigues, and was even prosecuted after the discovery of one of the numerous conspiracies of the day, but acquitted for want of proof.  He was the banker and money-broker of the party,—­a wretched banker enough!  The narrative of the son enables us to see what a miserable business the father was engaged in.  This near view of political intriguers, of royalists driven to all manner of expedients and standing at bay, of adventurers who did not shrink from the use of any means, not even the infernal-machine, did not dispose the young man already imbued with republican sentiments to change them, and this initiation into the secrets of the party was not likely to inspire him with much respect for the future Restoration.  He had too early seen men and things behind the scenes.  His father, in consequence of his swindling transactions, made a bankruptcy, which reduced the son to poverty and filled him with grief and shame.

He was now twenty years old; he had courage and hope, and he already wrote verses on all sorts of subjects,—­serious, religious, epic, and tragic.  One day, when he was in especial distress, he made up a little packet of his best verses and sent them to Lucien Bonaparte, with a letter, in which he set forth his unhappy situation.  Lucien loved literature, and piqued himself on being author and poet.  He was pleased with the attempts of the young man, and made him a present of the salary of a thousand or twelve hundred francs to which he was entitled as member of the Institute.  It was Beranger’s first step out of the poverty in which he had been plunged for several years, and he was indebted for the benefit to a Bonaparte, and to the most republican Bonaparte of the family.  He was always especially grateful for it to Lucien, and somewhat to the Bonapartes in general.

Receiving a small appointment in the bureau of the University through the intervention of the Academician Arnault, a friend of Lucien Bonaparte, Beranger lived gayly during the last six years of the Empire.  He managed to escape the conscription, and never shouldered a musket.  He reserved himself to sing of military glory at a later day, but had no desire to share in it as soldier.  He was elected into a singing club called The Cellar, all of whose members were songwriters and good fellows, presided over by Desaugiers, the lord of misrule and of jolly minstrels.  Beranger, after his admission to the Caveau, at first contended with Desaugiers in his own style, but already a ground of seriousness and thought showed through his gayety.  He wrote at this time his celebrated song of the Roi d’Yvetot, in which, while he caricatured the little play-king, the king in the cotton nightcap, he seemed to be slyly satirizing the great conquering Emperor himself.