The émigrés crowded the drawing-rooms of the Tuileries. One might have thought one's self at Coblenz. Those men who belonged to the old régime were especially appreciated. The one of his aides-de-camp who most pleased the Emperor was perhaps the Count of Narbonne, knight of honor of one of the daughters of Louis XV., Minister of War under Louis XVI. The most rigid, the most precise etiquette prevailed in the Imperial residences. The high dignitaries and marshals concealed their plebeian names under pompous titles of princes and dukes. Madame de Mailly, the widow of a marshal of the royal period, had been admitted to the rank and privileges of the wives of the grand officers of the crown, and had figured as a marshal's widow, at the reception of January 1, 1811. The court of Versailles appeared to have revived. Napoleon preferred to derive his power from divine right than from the will of the nation. "He was much struck," Metternich says in his Memoirs, "by the idea of ascribing the origin of supreme power to divine choice. One day at Compiègne, soon after his marriage, he said to me, 'I notice that when the Empress writes to her father, she addresses him as His Holy Imperial Highness. Is that your usual way?' I told him he was so addressed from the tradition of the old Germanic Empire, and because he also wore the apostolic crown of Hungary. Napoleon then said with some solemnity, 'It is a noble and excellent custom. Power derives from God, and that is the only way it can be secure from human assault. Some time or other I shall adopt the same title.'" At about the same time, in conversation with M. Molé about the houses building in Paris, on being asked when he intended to give his attention to the Church of the Madeleine, the Emperor said, "Well, what is expected of me?" M. Molé told him that he had heard that it was intended for a Temple of Glory. "That's what people think, I know," said Napoleon; "but I mean it for a memorial in expiation of the murder of Louis XVI." He said to Metternich: "When I was young I favored the Revolution out of ignorance and ambition. When I came to the age of reason I followed its counsels and my own instinct, and crushed the Revolution." At another time he said: "The French throne was empty. Louis XVI. had not been able to hold it. If I had been in his place, in spite of the immense progress it had made in men's minds during the previous reigns, the Revolution would not have triumphed. When the King fell, the Republic took its place; and I set that aside. The former throne was buried under the ruins; I had to make a new one."