CHAPTER XXXIII.

The tuileries.

The Tuileries had again found a master; the halls where Marie Antoinette received her joyous guests, her beautiful lady-friends, were now again alive with elegant female figures, and resounded with gay voices, cheerful laughter, and unaffected pleasantry.  The apartments in which Louis XVI. had passed such sad and fearful days, where he had laid with his ministers such nefarious schemes, and where royalty had been trodden down under the feet of the infuriated populace—­these rooms were now occupied by the hero who had subdued the people, slain the revolution and restored to France peace and glory.

The Tuileries had again found a master—­the throne-room was still vacant and empty, for the first consul of the republic dared not yet lay claim to this throne which the revolution had destroyed, and which the republic had forever removed from France.  But if there was no throne in the Tuileries, there was at least a court; and “Madame Etiquette,” driven away from the royal palace since the days of the unfortunate Marie Antoinette, had again, though with modest and timid step, slipped into the Tuileries.  It is true, she now clandestinely occupied a servant’s room; but the day was not far distant when, as Egeria, she would whisper advice and dictate laws to the ear of the new Numa Pompilius; when all doors would be open to her, and when she alone would, at all times, have access to the mighty lord of France.

In the Luxemburg, the fraternity and the equality of the revolution had been set aside, as, long before, on the 13th Vendemiaire, the liberty of the revolution had been cast away.  In the Luxemburg the “citoyenne” Bonaparte had become “Madame” Bonaparte, and the young daughter of the citizeness Josephine heard herself called “Mademoiselle” Hortense!

After the entrance into the Tuileries, fraternity and equality disappeared rapidly, and the distinctions of gentlemen and servants, rulers and subjects, superiors and subordinates, were again introduced.  The chief of the administration was surrounded with honors and distinctions; the court, with all its grades, degrees, and titles, was there; it had its courtiers, flatterers, and defamers; and also its brilliant festivities, splendors, and pomp!

It is true this was not the work of a moment, nor so rapid an achievement as the transition from the Luxemburg to the Tuileries, but the introduction of the words “madame” and “monsieur” removed the first obstacle which held the whole French nation bound to the same platform; and a second obstacle had fallen, when permission was granted to all the emigres, with the exception of the royal family, to return to their native country.

The aristocrats of old France returned in vast numbers; they, the bearers of old names of glory, the legitimists, who had fled before the guillotine, now hoped to win again the throne from the consulate.