He was now twenty years old; he had courage and hope, and he already wrote verses on all sorts of subjects,--serious, religious, epic, and tragic. One day, when he was in especial distress, he made up a little packet of his best verses and sent them to Lucien Bonaparte, with a letter, in which he set forth his unhappy situation. Lucien loved literature, and piqued himself on being author and poet. He was pleased with the attempts of the young man, and made him a present of the salary of a thousand or twelve hundred francs to which he was entitled as member of the Institute. It was Béranger's first step out of the poverty in which he had been plunged for several years, and he was indebted for the benefit to a Bonaparte, and to the most republican Bonaparte of the family. He was always especially grateful for it to Lucien, and somewhat to the Bonapartes in general. Receiving a small appointment in the bureau of the University through the intervention of the Academician Arnault, a friend of Lucien Bonaparte, Béranger lived gayly during the last six years of the Empire. He managed to escape the conscription, and never shouldered a musket. He reserved himself to sing of military glory at a later day, but had no desire to share in it as soldier. He was elected into a singing club called _The Cellar_, all of whose members were songwriters and good fellows, presided over by Désaugiers, the lord of misrule and of jolly minstrels. Béranger, after his admission to the _Caveau_, at first contended with Désaugiers in his own style, but already a ground of seriousness and thought showed through his gayety. He wrote at this time his celebrated song of the _Roi d'Yvetot_, in which, while he caricatured the little play-king, the king in the cotton nightcap, he seemed to be slyly satirizing the great conquering Emperor himself.