cesses,
could pass the "ship" without making a profound obeisance, which they
were also compelled to make on passing the royal couch.

The king restored yet another fashion of the old era--the fashion of the
"royal lady-friends."

Like his brother the Count d'Artois, Louis XVIII. also had his
lady-friends; and among these the beautiful and witty Countess Ducayla
occupied the first position. It was her office to amuse the king, and
dissipate the dark clouds that were only too often to be seen on the
brow of King Louis, who was chained to his arm-chair by ill-health,
weakness, and excessive corpulency. She narrated to him the _chronique
scandaleuse_ of the imperial court; she reminded him of the old affairs
of his youth, which the king knew how to relate with so much wit and
humor, and which he so loved to relate; it devolved upon her to examine
the letters of the "black cabinet," and to read the more interesting
ones to the king.

King Louis was not ungrateful to his royal friend, and he rewarded her
in a truly royal manner for sometimes banishing _ennui_ from his
apartments. Finding that the countess had no intimate acquaintance with
the contents of the Bible, he gave her the splendid Bible of Royaumont,
ornamented with one hundred and fifty magnificent engravings, after
paintings of Raphael. Instead of tissue-paper, a thousand-franc note
covered each of these engravings[40].

[Footnote 40: Amours et Galanteries des Rois de France, par St. Edme,
vol. ii., p. 383. Memoires d'une Femme de Qualite, vol. i., p. 409.]

On another occasion, the king gave her a copy of the "Charter;" and in
this each leaf was also covered with a thousand-franc note, as in
the Bible.

For so many proofs of the royal generosity, the beautiful countess,
perhaps willingly, submitted to be called "the royal snuff-box," which
appellation had its origin in the habit which the king fondly indulged
in of strewing snuff on the countess's lovely shoulder, and then
snuffing it up with his nose.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE DRAWING-KOOM OF THE DUCHESS OF ST. LEU.

While the etiquette and frivolity of the old era were being introduced
anew at the Tuileries, and while M. de Blacas was governing in
complacent recklessness, time was progressing, notwithstanding his
endeavors to turn it backward in his flight.

While, out of the incessant conflict between the old and the new France,
a discontented France was being born, Napoleon, the Emperor of Elba, wa