Gérard had built for himself a house in the Rue des Augustins, near the ancient church of St. Germain des Près; and there, every Wednesday evening, summer and winter, he received whatever was in any way illustrious in France, or whatever the other capitals of Europe sent to Paris, _en passant_. "Four small rooms," says Mme. Ancelot, "and a very small antechamber, composed the whole apartment. At twelve o'clock tea was served, with eternally the same cakes, over which a pupil of Gérard's, Mlle. Godefroy, presided. Gérard himself talked; his wife remained nailed to a whist-table, attending to nothing and to nobody. Evening once closed in, cards were the only occupation of Mme. Gérard." From Mme. de Staël down to Mlle. Mars, from Talleyrand and Pozzo di Borgo down to M. Thiers, there were no celebrities, male or female, that, during thirty years, (from 1805 to 1835,) did not flock to Gérard's house, and all, how different soever might be their character or position, agreed in the same opinion of their host; and those who survive say of him to this day,--"Nothing in his _salons_ announced that you were received by a great _Artist_, but before half an hour had elapsed you felt you were the guest of a distinguished Man; you had seen by a glance at Gérard's whole person and air that he was something apart from others,--that the sacred fire burned there!" The regret felt for Gérard's loss by all who ever knew him is not to be told, and speaks as highly for those who cherished as for him who inspired it. His, again, was one of the _salons_ (impossible now in France) where genius and social superiority, whether of birth or position, met together on equal terms. Without having, perhaps, as large a proportion of the old _noblesse de cour_ at his house as had Mme. Lebrun, Gérard received full as many of those eminent personages whose political occupations would have seemed to estrange them from the world of mixed society and the Arts. This is a _nuance_ to be observed. Under the Empire, hard and despotic as was the rule of Bonaparte, and anxious even as he was to draw round him all the aristocratic names that would consent to serve his government, there was--owing to the mere force of events and the elective origin of the throne--a strong and necessary democratic feeling, that assigned importance to each man according to his works. Besides this, let it be well observed, the first Empire had a strong tendency to protect and exalt the Arts, from its own very ardent desire to be made glorious in the eyes of posterity. Napoleon I. was, in his way, a consummate artist, a prodigiously intelligent _metteur en scène_ of his own exploits, and he valued full as much the man who delineated or sang his deeds, as the minister who helped him to legislate, or the diplomatist who drew up protocols and treaties. The Emperor was a lover of noise and show, and his time was a showy and a noisy one. Bonaparte had, in this respect, little enough of the genuine Tyrant nature.