Paris, at this early period of the Consulate, was an abode full of pleasure and enjoyment. The treaty of Amiens had just been concluded, peace had been obtained through victory, and people were desirous of amusement and repose; they were emerging from the system of the Directory, the spirit of good society again raised its head, and its rules and customs were eagerly sought for, in order to restore it from its ruins. There was a little court at the Tuileries around Joséphine; all the ceremonies and etiquette of former times were collected with avidity; ambassadors alone had liveries, and their splendid equipages shone with double lustre among the half-republican assemblage, where there was a long string of hackney-coaches with their numbers concealed. Napoleon still reserved all his magnificence for his military festivals; his grand reviews on the Place du Carrousel, where in the midst of clouds of dust the squadrons of _guides_, and the grenadiers of the consular guard defiled, as we see them depicted in the pictures of Isabey. The luxurious splendour of the embassies cast over every thing belonging to the legation, an aristocratic gloss which turned the heads of this generation; and this may explain the success in female society enjoyed by various members of the _corps diplomatique_ at this period, and the close and tender intimacies which were afterwards so useful to Prince Metternich in his diplomatic _surveillances_. Young Nesselrode, like all Russians, spoke French with the greatest fluency, and without the decided accent, which all Prince Metternich's talents are unable to correct. He had his share of the dissipation of the new court, where some young women, as if astonished at their own position, forgot themselves, and forgot also that they had the gravest and most serious head in the world as their chief. I can hardly say wherefore, but nothing has given me a more contemptible idea of society in the time of the Consulate, than the perusal of some memoirs that have been written in apology for it; beside the wonders achieved by one man, how mean and wretched appear the tricks and narrow intrigues of those around him!