“Going along the _Rue du Faubourg St. Denis_, we saw many of the British privates sauntering with a lazy air of enjoyment, looking at the print stalls where they were caricatured, cheapening grapes with the fruit girls, or treating themselves to a glass of lemonade. Our Officers, too, swarmed about, mounted—some well, some very badly; for those who could not procure a decent animal, put up with almost any creature that had four legs. Contrasting remarkably with the heavy cabriolets and clumsy dirty coaches—the awkward calèches and grotesque voitures—English equipages, complete, light, and genteel, glanced rapidly by, spattering, as foreigners, mortification from their wheels on the vehicles of the country. To estimate this exhibition properly, it is necessary to fancy its counterpart displayed by Frenchmen in London; to imagine a Frenchman of fashion, vested with magnificent amplitude of box-coat and commanding longitude of whip, spanking his four blood greys down Bond Street and St. James’s Street, or drawing up smartly, in a knowing style of driving, to talk over the topics of the morning with the Officer of the French Guards, on duty at the Palace of the King of England!”[60] ----- Footnote 60: _Paris revisited in 1815_ , p. 265. ----- All eyes were turned to Paris at that time. Many Sovereigns were living there—the Monarchs of Austria, Russia, Prussia, Holland, Bavaria, Wurtemburg, and France, and several independent Princes of Germany. They were accompanied by some of the most distinguished statesmen and diplomatists of the age; and military leaders were also present who enjoyed a European reputation for their achievements in the field. Events of transcendent importance were taking place in this capital; and the fate of a great and gallant nation, outlawed for a quarter of a century, and now reduced to submission, was being decided. Curiosity urged many to go to France, from all parts of Europe, at this historic juncture; the pleasures of society moved others, and duty took a still larger number there. “All the world’s in Paris,”[61] was indeed true, and crowds flocked to that city; while the discordant elements to be found there, and the strange medley of Frenchmen, Englishmen, and foreigners of almost every nationality, brought together and kept together, at such a time and at such a place, presented at once a scene that was both unique and remarkable. ----- Footnote 61: Popular song of the day. ----- Paris was gay and dissolute, and the Palais Royal might be called the centre of dissipation.