After Napoleon returned to Paris on January twenty-seventh, 1806, he had promptly abandoned the avocation of war, and had reassumed his favorite rôle of emperor. On New Year's day the republican calendar had ceased to exist; there was not even that to remind him of the past. His figure was beginning to grow more portly; his carriage was more stately, and his demeanor more distant. The great Corsican began to emulate the Oriental conquerors of old--men of the people who, like himself, had risen to giddy heights by usurpation and military conquest--in surrounding himself with mystery and hedging himself about with various ranks of courtiers. Nearest him, absent in person, but present in their representatives, were the subsidiary reigning kings, princes, and grand dukes. Next in order, present in the flesh, and first in actual splendor, were the newly made honorary princes and dukes. Some of the old nobility continued to smile contemptuously at this array of former republicans and Jacobins, but many, and those not the least able and influential, hurried to accept office at the court, where their presence was earnestly desired. Etiquette reached an artificial perfection which showed how unnatural it was to those who practised it. In the Tuileries, as was wittily said, everything moved to the tap of the drum. The parvenu princes and dukes had each his proper state, and being now assured of ample income and hereditary office, they displayed a self-indulgence and an independence which augured ill for their continued devotion to their creator.