But what a magnificent Court would gravitate around him henceforth! This was the dawn of the grand festivities in the Hall of the Marshals, described by the Duchesse d'Abrantes: 'On both sides of the room, three rows of women covered with flowers, diamonds and waving feathers. And behind them the line formed by the officers of the Emperor's household and those of the princesses'; then the generals in uniforms glittering with gold, the senators, the councillors of State, the ministers, all richly dressed, their breasts covered with the stars and ribbons that Europe offered us on its knees/
There was the same display of luxury at all the imperial receptions, but they all retained the somewhat military organization that suggested 'reviews with ladies taking part", as the Comte de Saint-Aulaire remarked.
The Comtesse de Boigne's description of the ball given in 1806 on the occasion of Stephanie de Beauharnais's marriage certainly does not suggest a very enjoyable evening. The guests were parked in the two ballrooms, the Galerie de Diane and the Galerie des Marechaux, according to the colour of their tickets, and were not allowed to go from one o the other. Nor were they allowed to dance, at any rate before a certain hour, their role meanwhile being restricted to watching the quadrilles performed by sixteen ladies and sixteen chamberlains, led by Hortense and Caroline.
The Emperor, the Empress and the princesses took their seats on a platform. When the ballets were over, the Emperor stepped down alone and went the round of the room, addressing himself exclusively to the ladies. He was wearing his 'Francis the First' costume, more or less the same as for the Coronation: white satin breeches, feather-trimmed cap trimmed with a diamond clasp. 'This costume may have looked well in the design', says Madame de Boigne, 'but on him, short, fat, and awkward in his movements as he was, it was decidedly unbecoming. I may have been prejudiced, but I thought the Emperor looked hideous, he reminded me of the King of Diamonds/
Having completed his round, Napoleon returned to Josephine, and the procession departed 'without mixing at all with the plebs'. By nine o'clock it was all over; the guests were now free to dance, but the Court had gone. 1 followed its example', adds the young woman, much taken aback by the imperial behaviour. 'I had known other monarchs, but none of them treated the public so cavalierly.'
The same criticism might be applied to many of the festive occasions at the Tuileries, especially the singular ball of 1812, given in the Salle des Spectacles, at which such a rigorous demarcation was established between the personnel of the Court and the bourgeois guests, that not only did the latter take no part in the dancing, but they were forbidden to approach the buffet, and were obliged to wait in their boxes for the lacqueys to bring round refreshments.
Goddess of Equality, so dear to the preceding generation, how sadly you must have veiled your face!
Nearly all the official receptions had another defect in common-their stilted nature. At Josephine's concerts, at Marie-Louise's evening parties, when Murat or Pauline threw open their doors, or Junot, Berthier, Bessieres and Cam-bacer&s gave balls, there was always the same ceremonial luxury, the same 'regular explosion of magnificence'.
There was nothing to suggest the easy manners, the natural elegance that characterized the salons of the eighteenth century, nor anything to enliven or vary social entertainment. It had been disciplined like everything else, and its formula would remain unchanged. Up to the end of the Empire, the only diversity allowed in the recurrent fetes was the introduction of novel subjects for the quadrilles, such as the Vestals, given by Caroline in 1808, and Chess at the Italian Embassy the following year, with living chessmen performing evolutions on a gigantic chessboard; and most famous of all, that of the Hours, which created a furore at Court on the eve of the Russian campaign.
All this was brilliant, magnificent - but how many couples would have preferred a less pedantic choreography, such as the Bolero, the Allemande, the Mont-ferrine, the Monaco - a former favourite of Bonaparte's - the Grand-fere, which he still asked for at times, or simply the Valse, introduced into France by Tremis, and described by Kotzebue as 'a dance of familiarity demanding the amalgamation of two dancers, which runs as smoothly as oil on polished marble'.
In the rest of Paris, however, from the days of the Consulate onwards, a score of social circles had rubbed shoulders with one another, each with its own habits and pleasures -much to the advantage of social life, which thus lost its uniformity.
There existed at first a few political salons, but now that Fouche had his eye on them they kept out of the limelight as much as possible. Mme de Stael had tried to have one of her own, the one of which Bonaparte said: 'It's not a salon, it's a club', but she was soon given to understand that the air of Paris was not good for her.
The authorities took less umbrage at the little literary societies. Towards 1800, Pauline de Beaumont hired an apartment in the Rue Neuve-du-Luxembourg and started her salon bleu, or as she might have called it, her menagerie and aviary, since the nicknames of her guests were derived from natural history. Pauline herself was known as the 'Swallow', Chenedolle the "Raven of Vire', Chateaubriand the Illustrious Raven', and Fontanes the 'Wild Boar\
There were many celebrities to be met with, too, at Sophie Gay's. She had not yet moved to Aix-Ia-Chapelle, and was on familiar terms with Nepomucene Lemercier and Jouy, with Coupigny, the king of ballad-singers, Musson the mysti-fyer, Frederic the horn-player, Dalvinar the harpist, and the inimitable singer Garat, whom Piccini called 'Garat la mousique', to distinguish him from his namesake.
Composers and virtuosi were also among the habitual guests of the Comtesse Merlin, a beautiful, witty grande dame, with a singing voice they delighted to hear. The painters, for their part, met chiefly at David's house in the Rue de Seine, at Carle Vernet's studio, where the awards of the Salon were celebrated by balls, and at the hotel of Baron Gerard, where visitors were welcomed by a whole gallery of celebrities - Canova, Talma, Ducis — even the Emperor himself.
Parties were also given in dramatic circles. Mile Duches-nois entertained a brilliant gathering one evening in 1805, on the occasion of her birthday. But how imprudent of her to invite that scandalmonger of a Stendhal! A Soiree in Busker-town might have served as a title for the reportage that Ariane's party suggested to the future author of the Chartreuse de Forme.
Beyle arrived too early. In the tragic actress's drawing-room he found four or five "cads' sitting in a circle, with an old dwarf lady who prided herself on playing the piano, and a family from Valenciennes whose daughter 'had nothing remarkable about her but two big tits, very hard and very round". The centre of interest was the hostess, "weighed down by her long robes and her Cyrus, which was giving her a stiff neck'.
Soon a tall young man made his appearance, whose manner of bowing 'was as utterly foolish and ridiculous as Fleury's is gracious 31 . This was Millevoye, an elegiac poet. Wearing enormous spectacles, he peered about everywhere for the actress, and ended by seating himself on the knees of another guest.
Many people who were expected had cried off, including Legouve, Mile Bourgoin, Mme de Saint-Aubin. Instead, there was Baptiste junior kissing the hand of the Duchenois, and looking as usual like a great, solemn fool, very pleased with himself, as he does on the stage'. Close at his heels came Mile Contat, accompanied by her lover, Parny's nephew, and by her daughter, the young Almaric, a love-child burdened with a name less natural than her birth. Their arrival was a noisy one, heralding the entrance of a femme tf esprit 'at the sort of party a fool would give for her*.