was dressed in white, after the mode of the
Austrian; the regiments were called legions; instead of numbers they
bore the names of departments; Napoleon was at St. Helena; and since
England refused him green cloth, he was having his old coats turned.
In 1817 Pelligrini sang; Mademoiselle Bigottini danced; Potier reigned;
Odry did not yet exist. Madame Saqui had succeeded to Forioso. There
were still Prussians in France. M. Delalot was a personage. Legitimacy
had just asserted itself by cutting off the hand, then the head, of
Pleignier, of Carbonneau, and of Tolleron. The Prince de Talleyrand,
grand chamberlain, and the Abbe Louis, appointed minister of finance,
laughed as they looked at each other, with the laugh of the two augurs;
both of them had celebrated, on the 14th of July, 1790, the mass of
federation in the Champ de Mars; Talleyrand had said it as bishop, Louis
had served it in the capacity of deacon. In 1817, in the side-alleys
of this same Champ de Mars, two great cylinders of wood might have
been seen lying in the rain, rotting amid the grass, painted blue, with
traces of eagles and bees, from which the gilding was falling. These
were the columns which two years before had upheld the Emperor's
platform in the Champ de Mai. They were blackened here and there with
the scorches of the bivouac of Austrians encamped near Gros-Caillou. Two
or three of these columns had disappeared in these bivouac fires, and
had warmed the large hands of the Imperial troops. The Field of May had
this remarkable point: that it had been held in the month of June and in
the Field of March (Mars). In this year, 1817, two things were popular:
the Voltaire-Touquet and the snuff-box a la Charter. The most recent
Parisian sensation was the crime of Dautun, who had thrown his brother's
head into the fountain of the Flower-Market.

They had begun to feel anxious at the Naval Department, on account of
the lack of news from that fatal frigate, The Medusa, which was destined
to cover Chaumareix with infamy and Gericault with glory. Colonel Selves
was going to Egypt to become Soliman-Pasha. The palace of Thermes, in
the Rue de La Harpe, served as a shop for a cooper. On the platform of
the octagonal tower of the Hotel de Cluny, the little shed of boards,
which had served as an observatory to Messier, the naval astronomer
under Louis XVI., was still to be seen. The Duchesse de Duras read to
three or four friends her unpublished Ourika, in her bo