Still she hung down her head, and her confusion seemed only to increase; so that, unwilling to prolong her embarrassment, which I saw my presence had caused, I merely made a few inquiries from Pioche regarding his own health, and took my leave of the party. As I rode homeward, I could not help turning over in my mind the words of Pioche, “Thou art not in thy uniform now; thou hast nothing to blush for!” Here, then, seemed the key to the changed manner of the poor girl when I met her at Austerlitz,--some feeling of womanly shame at being seen in the costume of the vivandière by one who had known her only in another guise. But could this be so? I asked myself,--a question a very little knowledge of a woman's heart might have spared me. And thus pondering, I returned to the Luxembourg. CHAPTER XVI. AN OLD FRIEND UNCHANGED They who took their tone in politics from the public journals of France must have been somewhat puzzled at the new and unexpected turn of the papers in Government influence at the period I now speak of. The tremendous attacks against the “perfide Albion,” which constituted the staple of the leading articles in the “Moniteur,” were gradually discontinued; the great body of the people were separated from the “tyrannical domination of an insolent aristocracy;” an occasional eulogy would appear, too, upon the “native good sense and right feeling of John Bull” when not led captive by appeals to his passions and prejudices; and at last a wish more boldly expressed that the two countries, whose mission it should be to disseminate civilization over the earth, could so far understand their real interest as to become “fast friends, instead of dangerous enemies.” The accession of the Whigs to power in England was the cause of this sudden revolution. The Emperor, when First Consul, had learned to know and admire Charles Fox,--sentiments of mutual esteem had grown up between them,--and it seemed now as if his elevation to power were the only thing wanting to establish friendly relations between the two countries. How far the French Emperor presumed on Fox's liberalism,--and the strong bias to party inducing him to adopt such a line of policy as would run directly counter to that of his predecessors in office, and thus dispose the nation to more amicable views towards France,--certain it is that he miscalculated considerably when he built upon any want of true English feeling on the part of that minister, or any tendency to weaken, by unjust concessions, the proud attitude England had assumed at the commencement and maintained throughout the entire Continental war.