-Royal once
more to lodge his complaint personally. "Comment, monsieur le comte,"
was the reply of one of the principals, "vous dites qu'il y avait
vingt-six convives et qu'il n'y avait pas de quoi nourrir vingt; je vous
crois parfaitement; voila la commande de madame la comtesse, copiee dans
notre registre: 'Diner chez M. de Persigny pour seize personnes.'"

Madame had simply pocketed, or intended to pocket, fifteen hundred
francs--for Chevet rarely charged less than a hundred and fifty francs
per head, wines included--and had endeavoured to make the food for
sixteen do for twenty-six. Of course there was a scene. Madame promised
amendment, and the husband was only too willing to believe. The
amendment was worse than the original offence, for one night the whole
of the supper-table, set out a la Francaise, _i. e._, with everything on
it, gave way, because, her own dining-table having proved too small, she
had declined Chevet's offer of providing one at a cost of seven or eight
francs, and sent for a jobbing carpenter to put together some boards and
trestles at the cost of two francs. Chevet managed to provide another
banquet within three quarters of an hour, which, with the one that had
been spoiled, was put in the bill. Within a comparatively short time of
her husband's death, early in the seventies, Madame de Persigny
contracted a second marriage, in direct opposition to the will of her
family.

Most of the men in the immediate entourage of the Emperor were
intoxicated with their sudden leap into power, but of course the
intoxication manifested itself in different ways. A good many considered
themselves the composers of the Napoleonic Opera--for it was really such
in the way it held the stage of France for eighteen years, the usual
tragic finale not even being wanting. With the exception of De Persigny,
they were in reality but the orchestral performers, and he, to give him
his utmost due, was only the orchestrator of the score and part author
of the libretto. The original themes had been composed by the exile of
St. Helena, and were so powerfully attractive to, and so constantly
haunting, the ears of the majority of Frenchmen as to have required no
outward aid to remembrance for thirty-five years, though I do not forget
either Thiers' works, Victor Hugo's poetry, Louis-Philippe's generous
transfer of the great captain's remains to France, nor Louis-Napoleon's
own attempts at Strasburg and Boulogne, all of which con