The Court of the Empress Josephine by Imbert de Saint-Amand, Arthur Léon, baron, 1834-1900, Perry, Thomas Sergeant

Vanity of human events! What has become of these drawing-rooms of the Tuileries, which it was such an honor to enter, which were trod with such respectful awe? Look at the lamentable ruins of this ill-fated palace. There may still be seen, blackened with petroleum and stained by the rain, some of those drawing-rooms, once so brilliant, once thronged with an eager and showy crowd. What an instructive spectacle! When is one more urgently reminded of the emptiness of human glory and greatness? This nothingness fills the soul with melancholy when one thinks that soon these crumbling fragments will be razed and that soon one can say with the poet: The ruins themselves have perished, _Etiam periere ruinae_! [Footnote: The ruins have since been removed.--TR.]

IX.

HOUSEHOLD OP THE EMPRESS.

We have just studied the civil and the military household of the Emperor in 1805; let us now study the Empress's household at the same period.

The Empress's First Almoner was a bishop, a great lord, Ferdinand de Rohan. Her Maid of Honor was a relative of her first husband, the Duchess de La Rochefoucauld, called in the Imperial Almanack of 1805 simply Madame Chastule de La Rochefoucauld. She was short and deformed, but distinguished, for her intelligence, tact, and wit, void of ambition, with no taste for intrigue, who only reluctantly accepted the position of Maid of Honor, and often wanted to hand in her resignation. The Lady of the Bedchamber was Madame de Lavalette, a Beauharnais, an able and affectionate woman, who immortalized herself, in the early days of the Restoration, by saving her husband's life by her heroism.

To the four Ladies of the Palace at the beginning of the Empire, Madame de Lucay, Madame de Remusat, Madame de Talhouet, Madame de Lauriston, were added thirteen other ladies: Madame Duchatel, Madame de Seran, Madame de Colbert, Madame Savary, Madame Octave de Segur, Madame de Turenne, Madame de Montalivet, Madame de Bouille, Madame de Vaux, Madame de Marescot.

The Maid of Honor was for the Empress what the Grand Chamberlain was for the Emperor. The Lady of the Bedchamber's duties corresponded to those of the Keeper of the Wardrobe. The Ladies of the Palace were, so to speak, female chamberlains.

"We were all," said the Duchess of Abrantes, "at that time radiant with a sort of glory which women seek as eagerly as men do theirs, that of elegance and beauty. Among the young women composing the court of the Empress and that of the Princesses it would have been hard to find a single ill-favored woman, and there were very many whose beauty made, with no exaggeration, the greatest ornament of the festivities held every day in that fairy-like time."