commands, had obeyed his injunctions to
establish herself in a house of her own
rather than accept the apartments offered to
her by the dignitaries of the town of Aix-la-Chapelle.
She was consequently lodged in
a habitation much too small, and was put to
great inconvenience all the time that she
awaited the arrival of Napoleon to be better
accommodated.

Nothing could be more ridiculous than the
affected manners, and the struggles to be
dignified, of all the parvenus who now surrounded
the sovereign. That rough simplicity
and independent frankness which had hitherto
been considered suitable to a republic, were
expected to give place to a courtly and
ceremonious and high-bred tone, entirely unknown
to mushroom courtiers who sighed
for hints of Louis the Fourteenth's customs,
and vainly practised on their domestics the
stage tricks which they hoped might pass for
genuine high breeding.

Josephine had humour and natural good
sense enough to see the absurdity and vulgarity
of this aped gentility; and, was so
often tempted to treat it with ridicule, that
the refined Madame de la Rochefoucauld,
her chief lady of honour, and the stately M.
d'Harville, her grand chamberlain, found it
necessary to recommend to their lively mistress
a little more gravity and decorum.

To their serious representations Josephine
would laughingly reply: " All this etiquette
is perfectly natural to those born to a royal
estate and accustomed to support the weariness
of such a position. But to me, who have
had the good fortune to live for so many
years as a private gentlewoman, it may be
permitted to forgive those who cannot forget
the circumstance more than I can forget
it myself."

At length orders came that the Empress
was to take possession of the Hotel of the
Prefecture, and a series of receptions on a
grand scale commenced, where the chief
personages of the town, and distinguished
strangers, were received with all due regard
to etiquette and ceremony; the whole forming
a parody on the vanished grandeurs of Versailles;
which, even those who had suffered
in their extinction could laugh at, and treat
with intense ridicule. At their private
parties every fresh anecdote of the awkwardness
and pretension of the performers on this
new stage, was listened to with malicious
delight. Two of the most admired comic
actors of the day, who were received into
this circle, having arrived at Aix-la-Chapelle
with their company to play before the
Empress, furnished endless amusements by
their imitations of the manners, words, and
gestures of the unaccustomed courtiers; who
overdid everything and flew " like French
falconers" at whatever they imagined
would produce the desired effect of giving
them an air of polish.

On one occasion the Court was thrown
into considerable agitation by the forwardness
of the brave but inexperienced young
general, who commanded the department.
The first time he was presented to the
Empress—whom he saw seated on a long sofa
—he very coolly took his place beside her, as
he would if she had been the wife of the
mayor: in vain the chamberlain advanced a
seat, and the lady-in-waiting motioned him
to occupy it. He bowed, smilingly, but declined
their civilities, and kept his position.
Every one but Josephine herself sat on thorns;
but she good-naturedly took no notice of the
intrusion. A report, however, of the indignity
was made to the Emperor; who forthwith
sent back an angry message, reproving her
for her unbecoming indulgence, and thus
proving to her that her Court was destined
to be complete; for it was even furnished with
spies.

The secretary of the Empress, M.Deschamps,
before he was a courtier, had been an author
and an intimate of the actors of the day. His
new position placed him sometimes in embarrassing circumstances, as regarded his old
friends, and he found himself continually
mortified by their familiarity, and the recollection—
which they would not allow to sleep
—of the part he had formerly taken in
their ridicule of modern courtly manners.
Poor M. Deschamps was overwhelmed also
with the confidences of the Empress; who
applied to him to rescue her from the consequences
of her numerous extravagancies; so
that, between his terror of disgrace with the
Emperor, and of displeasing his mistress, he
had reason to regret having obtained the
place he had taken most urgent means to
obtain. His office was not only to provide
for the Empress's necessary charges; but to
suppress, to curtail, to avert, to dissimulate,
to conceal, and yet to provide for, every description
of fantastic extravagance which the
unbounded profusion of his mistress insisted
on. Josephine would listen to his representations,
and would read, or seem to read, his long
accounts with infinite patience; but it never
entered into her intention of following his
advice, or restricting her taste, however expensive
and inconvenient.

The Emperor had given private orders to
his friends to use their utmost ingenuity to
attract to his wife's Court, ladies of old
family and distinguished manners; and it
was comical to observe the unconcealed gratification
of many of the new courtiers, when
they found themselves companions of personages
whose names sounded well in their
ears.

Amongst the ladies who had been attracted
to Josephine's Court with her husband, was
the young and pretty Vicomtesae de Turenne,
whose diamonds dazzled the eyes of the
Empress and her attendants, quite as much
as her beauty. Her husband, a tall, fine,
noble-looking man, was appointed to a place about
the Court; and great was the satisfaction