the female toilet and of what dresses, what robes, and what jewels the Empress should wear on such and such an occasion.  One day he daubed her dress with ink because he did not like it, and wanted her to put on another.  Whenever he looked into her wardrobe he was sure to throw everything topsy-turvy.”

This characteristic anecdote perfectly agrees with what we have
heard from other persons.  When the Neapolitan Princess di----- was
at the Tuileries as ‘dame d’honneur’ to Bonaparte’s sister Caroline
Murat, then Queen of Naples, on the grand occasion of the marriage
with Maria Louisa, the, Princess, to her astonishment, 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.”