master of ceremonies was compelled to submit to this royal
decision; but in doing so he observed, with profound sadness: "Your
majesty is pleased to smile, but dress makes half the man; uniformity of
attire confounds the distinctions of rank, and leads directly to an
agrarian law."

"Yes, marquis," exclaimed the king, "you think precisely as Figaro. Many
a man laughs at a judge in a short dress, who trembles before a
procurator in a long gown[39]."

[Footnote 39: Memoires d'une Femme de Qualite, vol. i., p. 384.]

But while the king suppressed the counter-revolution in fashions, he
allowed the grand-master of ceremonies to reintroduce the entire
etiquette of the old era. In conformity with this etiquette, the king
could not rise from his couch in the morning until the doors had been
opened to all those who had the _grande entree_--that is to say, to the
officers of his household, the marshals of France, several favored
ladies; further, to his _cafetier_, his tailor, the bearer of his
slippers, his barber, with two assistants, his watchmaker, and his
apothecaries.

The king was dressed in the presence of all these favored individuals,
etiquette permitting him only to adjust his necktie himself, but
requiring him, however, to empty his pockets of their contents of the
previous day.

The usage of the old era, "the public dinner of the royal family," was
also reintroduced; and the grand-master of ceremonies not only found it
necessary to make preparations for this dinner weeks beforehand, but the
king was also compelled to occupy himself with this matter, and to
appoint for this great ceremony the necessary "officers of
provisions"--that is to say, the wine-taster, the cup-bearers, the grand
doorkeepers, and the cook-in-chief.

At this first grand public dinner, the celebrated and indispensable
"ship" of the royal board stood again immediately in front of the king's
seat. This old "ship" of the royal board, an antique work of art which
the city of Paris had once presented to a King of France, had also been
lost in the grand shipwreck of 1792, and the grand-master of ceremonies
had been compelled to have a new one made by the court jeweller for the
occasion. This "ship" was a work in gilded silver, in form of a vessel
deprived of its masts and rigging; and in the same, between two golden
plates, were contained the perfumed napkins of the king. In accordance
with the old etiquette, no one, not even the princes and prin