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

May 19, after the family dinner, Madame Murat was more and more distressed at not being a Princess, when she was a Bonaparte by birth, while Madame Joseph and Madame Louis, one of whom was a Clary, the other a Beauharnais, bore that title, and burst out into complaints and reproaches. "Why," she asked of her all-powerful brother, "why condemn me and my sisters to obscurity, to contempt, while covering strangers with honors and dignities?" At first these words annoyed Napoleon. "In fact," he exclaimed, "judging from your pretensions, one would suppose that we inherited the crown from the late King our father." At the end of the interview, Madame Murat, not satisfied with crying, fainted away. Napoleon softened at once, and a few days later there appeared a notification in the _Moniteur_ that henceforth the Emperor's sisters should be called Princesses and Imperial Highnesses.

The Empress's Maid of Honor was Madame de La Rochefoucauld; her Lady of the Bedchamber was Madame de Lavalette. Her Ladies of the Palace, whose number was soon raised to twelve, and later still more augmented, were at first only four: Madame de Talhouet, Madame de Lucay, Madame de Lauriston, and Madame de Remusat. These ladies, too, aroused the hottest jealousies, and soon they gave rise to a sort of parody of the questions of vanity that agitated the Emperor's family. The women who were admitted to the Empress's intimacy could never console themselves for the privileges accorded to the Ladies of the Palace.

In essentials all courts are alike. On a greater or smaller scale they are rank with the same pettinesses, the same chattering gossip, the same trivial squabbles as the porter's lodge, ante-chambers, and servants' quarters. If we examine these things from the standpoint of a philosopher, we shall find but little difference between a steward and a chamberlain, between a chambermaid and a lady of the palace. We may go further and say that as soon as they have places and money at their disposal, republicans have courtesies, as much as monarchs, and everywhere and always there are to be found people ready to bow low if there is anything on the ground that they can pick up. Revolutions alter the forms of government, but not the human heart; afterwards, as before, there exist the same pretensions, the same prejudices, the same flatteries. The incense may be burned before a tribune, a dictator, or a Caesar, there are always the same flattering genuflections, the same cringing.