A
crowd appeared to mount the stair; the great doors of the reception-room
were flung open, and two pages announced their Majesties the Emperor and
the Empress. So engaged were Lanty and Blanche, that they never heard
the tumult occasioned by the august approach.
It was indeed the Emperor, who, returning from the Theatre Francais, and
seeing the Marquis's windows lighted up, proposed to the Empress to drop
in on the party. He made signs to the musicians to continue: and the
conqueror of Marengo and Friedland watched with interest the simple
evolutions of two happy Irish people. Even the Empress smiled and,
seeing this, all the courtiers, including Naples and Talleyrand, were
delighted.
"Is not this a great day for Ireland?" said the Marquis, with a tear
trickling down his noble face. "O Ireland! O my country! But no more of
that. Go up, Phil, you divvle, and offer her Majesty the choice of punch
or negus."
Among the young fellows with whom I was most intimate in Paris was
Eugene Beauharnais, the son of the ill-used and unhappy Josephine by her
former marriage with a French gentleman of good family. Having a smack
of the old blood in him, Eugene's manners were much more refined than
those of the new-fangled dignitaries of the Emperor's Court, where (for
my knife and fork were regularly laid at the Tuileries) I have seen my
poor friend Murat repeatedly mistake a fork for a toothpick, and the
gallant Massena devour pease by means of his knife, in a way more
innocent than graceful.
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