A miserable cane, worth perhaps thirteen sous, but stirring up such great memories! After obtaining it for its weight in gold, the Viennese fell into a sort of ecstasy. 'So that is his stick! That's what he leaned on when he went gathering herbs in the forests, when he withdrew from the curiosity of men to devote himself to the company of owls! That was the support of his old age, the companion of his wild, wandering life; That was .. .' But as they listened to this stream of words, everybody began to reproach himself for having let Jean Jacques's stick pass into foreign hands, and as if to make amends *they went up to touch it, caress it and water it with tears'. It was not for nothing that the French had learn to weep from the Nonvette Helo'isel
It must be confessed, however, that their emotions were somewhat artificial. The sobs they uttered, the eyes they dabbed, all that was merely a way of showing that they were well-educated and tender-hearted. The rest of the time they felt, on the contrary, very gay, and they proved this to their friends by playing more or less amusing tricks on them, known as Mystifications.
These fooleries had started at Lucien Bonaparte's house at Plessis-Chamant, where people amused themselves by squirting water or firing petards under people's noses, slipping a live fox between Fontanes's sheets, making beds rock or scattering them with teasel prickles - making, in fact, the old Chateau of Cardinal de Bernis into a forerunner of the shops seUiag hoaxes on the main boulevards, which were to be all the rage at a later date.
The butt of these jokes was old Ramolino, well-known for his superstitious fears. One night when he was in his bed, a spectre came and shook it,
'I'm your father's ghost,' it said. 'Swear to obey me in everything!'
4 1 swear! What must I do?'
'Never eat spinach!'
The poor man swore all that was demanded of him, and of course a magnificent dish of spinach was offered him next day at luncheon. He refused it; his host persisted, and Ramolino, his teeth chattering, ended by recounting the nocturnal tragedy, to the delight of the other guests. Lucien had to divest himself of his ministerial coat and disguise himself as a ghost again, to lift the interdict.
People were not much kinder at Mortef ontaine, his brother Joseph's house. There Pauline Leclerc and Caroline Murat amused themselves by remorselessly pestering the octogenarian Casti, Joseph the Second's official poet. If they saw him dozing under a tree, they approached on tiptoe to snatch off his wig. If he was about to checkmate his opponent, they would sweep the chessmen off the board with the back of the hand and shoot them onto the carpet as if by accident. Delightful young women!
More complicated hoaxes were perpetrated at Grimod de la Reyniere's country house at Villiers-sur-Marne, which was as full of shams and booby-traps as Robert-Houdin's house later on. 1 There were secret cupboards everywhere, trapdoors opening unexpectedly, voice-pipes giving vent to mysterious summonses. Even when there was not a cloud in the sky, a stage thunderstorm would break out in the middle of the night: the curtains shook in the wind, the doors creaked, a sound of chains being dragged along came up from the cellars, skeletons appeared, and to the astonishment of the guests, family portraits in their frames began putting out their tongues.
But jokes of this kind called for lengthy preparation, and not everybody had Grimod's skill or imagination. Instead of working the thing themselves, many hosts preferred to call in the assistance of some established practical joker like Musson, Legros or Thiemet, who had made so to speak a career of mystification.
When people wanted to give a dinner-party, they fixed a date with one of these gentlemen, and for a fee of one louis — plus the meal—he would undertake to entertain the gallery, as he might have undertaken to supply the flowers or play the piano. As a rule the host pointed out to him the intended butt of the evening, who would be seated next to him. All the guests were in the secret except the victim. Imagine his perturbation when Legros, disguised as an old general, told him he had had his ear-drum broken at the battle of Marengo, and kept asking him, all through dinner, to shout as loudly as possible down an enormous ear-trumpet!
Thiemet simulated a different infirmity, imitating as he talked the noise made by the hydraulic machine at Marly, under the pretext that his mother had been frightened during her pregnancy by the tic-tac of that famous apparatus.
1 J. E. Robert-Houdin, 1805-71, a famous conjurer. [Translator.]
As for Musson, he had a genius for travel. It was he that took a somewhat simple-minded personage, who wanted to visit Orleans, for a day-long drive in an enormous berline laden with luggage. Indefatigably, without ever leaving Paris, the carriage went in a circle, 'Where are we now?* asked the traveller. 'That is Chartres Cathedral/ (pointing to the church of Saint-Cloud). Farther on, the Seine became the Loire. Horses were changed at imaginary relays, and off they started again for miles and miles, until at last the man, dazed by twelve hours' jolting, with a splitting headache and bruised ribs, returned home without even realizing that he was not in Orleans.
Obviously none of this exceeded the average studio rag. The only piquant side of the affair lay in seeing grave personages, bursting with their own importance, easily given to flowery eloquence and complacently displaying treasures of sensibility, amusing themselves with such tomfoolery.
But such was the spirit of the age. Solemn, tearful and schoolboyish by turns, its physiognomy was made up of a singular combination of contrasts.
CHAPTER XIII. FASHION
Extravagance of the Incroyables - The Englishman and his hairdresser - Dresses less transparent - The courturier Leroy -Court dresses— Napoleon and the ladies 9 rouge— A Marshal who refused to dress up — Furs, shawls and hats — Elegance at Longchamps
THE emigres who returned to France during the first months of the Consulate must have been greatly astonished by the strange disguises now affected by their compatriots.
The tail-coats of the Incroyables, with their leg-of-mutton sleeves and their wide lapels padded with wadding, breeches either tight-fitting or pleated like skirts, cravats strangling their necks, coiffures a la Titus sprouting from empty heads; the transparent dresses of the Merveilleuses with the waistline almost under the armpits, fashions making women look like the nymphs of Jean Goujon, only a bit less shy, gauze tunics showing arms and bust and allowing the rest to be guessed at—all this constituted a complete break with the elegance of former days. And in the streets of Paris, themselves almost unchanged, all this baroque, fantastic society, speaking a barely intelligible language, must have appeared to unaccustomed eyes like a people come from the antipodes, or inhabitants of the moon fallen on our planet on a day of Carnival.
It was obvious that fashion, like politics, had had its Revolution, which was even lasting longer than the other. For men as well as women the rules of good taste remained incalculable for some years after Brumaire.
A journalist of 1803 summed up, rather wittily, the code of masculine elegance. According to him, every dandy must have a long foot 'or have it made so by his bootmaker 5 . It was the tailor's duty to shorten his arms and tighten his coat, the good cut of which was recognized by the number of creases it made in the back. A well-bred man would refuse to wear anything that was not crumpled; he would sleep, if need be, in the shirt he was to wear next day, and make his servant take the newness out of his clothes, 'as in a certain island slaves are entrusted with the marriage night".