were one day selected to be presented to the Pope; and as most of them were very poor they found it necessary to combine economy with the etiquette necessary to be observed under the new order of things.  To save the expense of hiring carriages they therefore proceeded to the Pavilion de Flore on foot, taking the precaution of putting on gaiters to preserve their white silk stockings from the mud which covered the streets, for it was then the month of December.  On arriving at the Tuileries one of the party put his gaiters into his pocket.  It happened that the Pope delivered such an affecting address that all present were moved to tears, and the unfortunate president who had disposed of his gaiters in the way just mentioned drew them out instead of his handkerchief and smeared his face over with mud.  The Pope is said to have been much amused at this mistake.  If this anecdote should be thought too puerile to be repeated here, I may observe that it afforded no small merriment to Bonaparte, who made Michot the actor relate it to the Empress at Paris one evening after a Court performance.

Napoleon had now attained the avowed object of his ambition; but his ambition receded before him like a boundless horizon.  On the 1st of December; the day on which the Senate presented to the Emperor the result of the votes for hereditary succession, Francois de Neufchateau delivered an address to him, in which there was no want of adulatory expressions.  As President of the Senate he had had some practice in that style of speechmaking; and he only substituted the eulogy of the Monarchical Government for that of the Republican Government ‘a sempre bene’, as the Italians say.

If I wished to make comparisons I could here indulge in some curious ones.  Is it not extraordinary that Fontainebleau should have witnessed, at the interval of nearly ten years, Napoleon’s first interview with the Pope, and his last farewell to his army, and that the Senate, who had previously given such ready support to Bonaparte, should in 1814 have pronounced his abdication at Fontainebleau.

The preparations for the Coronation proved very advantageous to the trading classes of Paris.  Great numbers of foreigners and people from the provinces visited the capital, and the return of luxury and the revival of old customs gave occupation to a variety of tradespeople who could get no employment under the Directory or Consulate, such as saddlers, carriage-makers, lacemen, embroiderers, and others.  By these positive interests were created more partisans of the Empire than by opinion and reflection; and it is but just to say that trade had not been so active for a dozen years before.  The Imperial crown jewels were exhibited to the public at Biennais the jeweller’s.  The crown was of a light form, and, with its leaves of gold, it less resembled the crown of France than the antique crown of the Caesars.  These things were afterwards placed in the public treasury, together with the imperial