They assumed an air of superiority, which the latter answered with the most undisguised contempt. Ridicule, that fearful political engine, which, especially in France, is sufficient to batter down the hopes of any aspirant who lays himself open to it, and which Napoleon himself, in his greatest power, feared more than foreign armies or intestine conspiracies, was most unsparingly directed against them. The print-shops exposed them in every possible form of caricature, the theatres burlesqued their pretensions, songs and epigrams contributed to their discomfiture, and all the ingenuity of a witty and laughter-loving people was unmercifully poured out upon this resurrection of antediluvian remains. Their royal patrons came in for a full share of the general derision, but they seemed entirely unmindful that there was such a thing as popular opinion, or any other will than their own. There were objects all around them which might have preached to them of the uncertainty of human grandeur and the vanity of kingly pride, reminding them that there is but a step from the palace to the scaffold, which step had been taken by more than one of their family. The walls of their abode were yet marked by musket-balls, mementos of a day of appalling violence, and from the windows they could see the public square where the guillotine had permanently stood and the pavement had been crimsoned with the blood of their race. They had awakened from a long sleep, among a new order of men, who were strangers to them, and who looked upon them as beings long since buried, but now, unnaturally and indecorously, protruded upon living society. They commenced by placing themselves in antagonism to the nation, and erected a barrier which effectually divided them from the people. The history of the Republic and the Empire was to be blotted out; it was a forbidden theme in their presence, and whatever reminded them of it was carefully hidden from their legitimate vision. The remains of the Old Guard were removed to the provinces or drafted into new regiments; leaders, whose very names stirred France like the blast of a trumpet, were almost unknown in the royal circle; and the great Exile was never to be mentioned without the liability to a charge of treason.