ntraine;
Quand vous avez passe le Rhin,
Craindrez vous de passer la Seine?

[15] Innumerable jests and lampoons circulated at the time of
Napoleon's separation from Josephine, and second marriage. Conscious
of the unworthy part he acted, the Emperor was greatly galled by
them. "The keenest and most remarkable of these," says a German
author who was in Paris at the time, "is unquestionably a _Chanson
Poissarde_, of which hundreds of copies have been distributed, and
which thousands have got by heart. Its author, in spite of
Napoleon's fury, and of the zealous exertions of the police, has not
been discovered. Several hundred persons have been arrested for
copying or repeating it; but its original source remains unknown."
It consists of nine verses, in the vulgar and mutilated French of
the Paris _halles_. A couple of them will give a notion of the sly
wit of the whole. They refer, of course, to the Emperor and to his
future bride, Maria Louisa of Austria:--

Pour ell' il s'est fait l'aut' jour
Pemd'en bel habit d'dimanche,
Et des diamants tout autour,
Pres d' sa figur comm' ca tranche!
La p'tite luronne, j'en somm' sur,
Aim' mieux l'present que l'futur.

Ah! comm' ell' va s'amuser,
C' te princess' qui nous arrive!
Nous, j'allons boir' et danser,
N's enrouer a crier: Vive!
Ell, s' ra l'idol' d' la nation,
J' l'ons lu dans l'proclamation.

This reference to the martial prowess of the "_grande nation_," of
course nearly brought down the house, but it did not carry the audience
over the water, at least for some time. At last a new and successful
play proved a magnet of irresistible attraction, and produced a receipt
of twelve thousand pounds in three months.

In June, 1807, the new Theatre des Varietes opened. Its situation, on a
crowded central boulevard, is excellent, and its vogue, with a few brief
intervals, has been constant. A large proportion of the best French
comic actors of the present century have acted there during the
thirty-nine years that have elapsed since its inauguration. Amongst
these are reckoned Bosquier Gavaudan, the best couplet singer of his
day,--remarkable for his distinct articulation, and who, "from
constantly personating officers of rank, grew so accustomed to wear a
red ribbon in his coat, that, even when sitting in his dressing-