it was one o'clock before we slept.

XIII

This general satisfaction continued for five or six days. The old
mayors and their assistants were replaced as well as the field-guards,
and all those who had been displaced a few months before. The whole
city, even the women, wore little tri-colored cockades, and all the
seamstresses were busily at work making them, of red, white, and blue
ribbon; and those who railed so bitterly against the "ogre of Corsica,"
never spoke of Louis XVIII. except as the "Panada King." On the 25th
of March a Te Deum was sung, the garrison and all the civil authorities
joining in the service with great ceremony. After the Te Deum, the
authorities gave a grand dinner to the officers of the garrison at the
"Ville de Metz." The weather was fine and the windows were open, and
the hall was lighted by clusters of lamps hanging from the ceiling.
Catherine and I went out in the evening to enjoy the spectacle. We
could see the uniforms and the black coats sitting side by side around
the long tables, and first the mayor would rise, and then his
assistants, or the new commandant of the post, Mr. Brandon, to drink to
the health of the Emperor or of his ministers, of France, to peace or
to victory, etc., etc., and this they kept up till midnight.

Inside the glasses jingled, and outside the children fired crackers.
They had erected a climbing pole before the church, and wooden horses
and organ-grinders had come from Saverne, and there was a holiday at
the college. In Klein's Court, at the "Ox," there was a fight between
dogs and donkeys; in short, it was just as it was in 1830 and in 1848,
and afterward. The people never invent anything new to glorify those
who rise, or to express their contempt for those who fall.

But they soon found out that the Emperor had no time to lose in
rejoicings. The gazette said that "his Majesty wished for peace, that
he made no demands, that he was on good terms with his father-in-law
the Emperor Francis, that Marie Louise and the King of Rome were to
return, they were daily expected," etc.

But meanwhile the order arrived to arm the place. Two years before
Pfalzbourg was a hundred leagues from the frontier. The ramparts were
in ruins, the ditches filled up, and there was nothing in the arsenal
but miserable old muskets of the time of Louis XIV., which were
discharged with matches; and the guns were so unwieldy on their heavy
carriages, that horses were req