But in spite of this trenchant joke, Napoleonic government stood firm in France, and soon, this all-important point having been gained, there was not a little infectious enthusiasm, which grew in proportion as the Emperor deployed with every day and hour his marvelous faculties of administration. Reduced as the appropriations were, the public works in Paris went on; the naval station of Brest was completed; the veterans received their Emperor's minutest care; the destitute families of soldiers who had perished for France were relieved; the imperial pair were everywhere conspicuous when a good work was to be done. Finally, when a plan of regency for Maria Louisa was divulged, the praiseworthy, genuine sentiment which underlay these public activities was found to have reinforced their dramatic effect sufficiently to make the scheme acceptable. This plan, while giving to the Empress all the splendors of imperial sovereignty throughout both the Empire and the vassal states, was carefully constructed with wholesome checks. What she could not do was, however, less evident and less important than what she could do. In the hands of an able, devoted wife the regency might have been a tower of strength to an absent husband battling for the existence of his Empire; worked by a vain, unstable, and perhaps already disloyal nature, it had, with all its strength and display, but little value as a safeguard against the complots of the Talleyrand set, who desired the crash of the Empire that, amid the ruins, they might further pillage on their own account.