A Residence in France: With an Excursion Up the Rhine, and a Second Visit to SwitzerlandCooper, James Fenimore
History
A Residence in France: With an Excursion Up the Rhine, and a Second Visit to Switzerland
Cooper, James Fenimore
France -- Description and travel; Germany -- Description and travel; Switzerland -- Description and travel
They were all dressed with great simplicity; scarcely in high dinner
dress; the Queen and Madame Adelaide wearing evening hats. The
Princesses, as is uniformly the case with unmarried French girls of
rank, were without any ornaments, wearing their hair in the usual
manner.
After the ceremonies of being presented were gone through, I amused
myself with examining the company. This was a levee, not a drawing-room,
and there were no women among the visitors. The men, who did not appear
in uniform, were in common evening dress, which has degenerated of late
into black stocks and trousers.
Accident brought me next to an old man, who had exactly that
revolutionary air which has become so familiar to us by the engravings
of Bonaparte and his generals that were made shortly after the Italian
campaign. The face was nearly buried in neckcloth, the hair was long and
wild, and the coat was glittering, but ill-fitting and stiff. It was,
however, the coat of a _maréchal_; and, what rendered it still more
singular, it was entirely without orders. I was curious to know who this
relic of 1797 might be; for, apart from his rank, which was betrayed by
his coat, he was so singularly ugly as scarcely to appear human. On
inquiry it proved to be Marshal Jourdan.
There was some amusement in watching the different individuals who came
to pay their court to the new dynasty. Many were personally and
familiarly known to me as very loyal subjects of the last reign;
soldiers who would not have hesitated to put Louis-Philippe _au fil de
l'épée_, three months before, at the command of Charles X. But times
were changed. They now came to show themselves to the new sovereign;
most of them to manifest their disposition to be put in the way of
preferment, some to reconnoitre, others to conceal their disaffection,
and all to subserve their own interests. It was laughably easy to
discern who were confident of their reception by being of the ruling
party, who distrusted, and who were indifferent. The last class was
small. A general officer, whom I personally knew, looked like one who
had found his way into a wrong house by mistake. He was a Bonapartist by
his antecedents, and in his true way of thinking; but accident had
thrown him into the hands of the Bourbons, and he had now come to see
what might be gleaned from the House of Orleans. His reception was not
flattering, and I could only compare the indecision and wavering of his
manner to that of a regiment that falters before an unexpected volley.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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