As for the Emperor, the incapacity of his brothers was a weight upon his shoulders all through life. His family contributed more to his fall than is generally believed: it was a never-ending struggle he had to maintain against the childish vanity and extravagance of Josephine, the wrongheadedness of Joseph, the simple credulity of Louis, and the fatuous insufficiency of Jerome and Lucien. All, more good than otherwise, were manifestly unsuited to the places they occupied in life, and were continually mingling up the associations and habits of their small identities with the great requirements of newly acquired station. Napoleon created the Empire--the vast drama was his own. However he might please to represent royalty, however he might like to ally the splendours of a throne with the glories of a great captain, it was all his own doing. But how miserably deficient were the others in that faculty of adaptation that made him “de pair” with every dynasty of Europe! Into these thoughts I was led by finding myself standing in the Rue Taibout, opposite the house which was once celebrated as the _Café du Roi_--a name which it bore for many years under the Empire, and, in consequence, was held in high esteem by certain worthy _Légitimistes_, who little knew that the “King” was only a pretender, and, so far from being his sainted majesty Louis Dix-huit, was merely Jerome Buonaparte, king of Westphalia. The name originated thus:--One warm evening in autumn, a young man, somewhat over-dressed in the then “_mode_” with a very considerable border of pinkish silk stocking seen above the margin of his low boots “_à revers_” and a most inordinate amount of coat-collar, lounged along the Boulevard Italiens, occasionally ogling the passers-by, but, oftener still, throwing an admiring glance at himself, as the splendid windows of plate-glass reflected back his figure. His whole air and mien exhibited the careless _insouciance_ of one with whom the world went easily, asking little from him of exertion, less still of forethought. He had just reached the angle of the Rue Vi-vienne, and was about to turn, when two persons advanced towards him, whose very different style of dress and appearance bespoke very different treatment at the hands of Fortune. They were both young, and, although palpably men of a certain rank and condition, were equally what is called out-at-elbows; hats that exhibited long intimacy with rain and wind, shoes of very questionable colour, coats suspiciously buttoned about the throat, being all signs of circumstances that were far from flourishing. “Ah, Chopard, is’t thou?” said the fashionably dressed man, advancing with open hand to each, and speaking in the “tu” of intimate friendship, “And thou, too, Brissole, how goes it? What an age since we have met! Art long in Paris?”