Balzac | Page 5

present the Rue de Richelieu.
The fall of the Empire was less a restoration of the Monarchy than the definite disaggregation of the ancient aristocracy, which had been centralized round the court since the days of Richelieu. The Court of Louis XVIII. was no more like that of Louis XVI. than it was like the noisy one of Napoleon. Receiving only a few personal friends, the King allowed his drawing-rooms to remain deserted by the nobles that had returned from exile; and the two or three who were regular visitors were compelled to rub elbows with certain parvenus, magistrates, financiers, generals of the Empire whom it would not have been prudent to eliminate.
In this initial stage of society-decentralization, the diminished band of the Boulevard Saint-Germain--descendants of the eighteenth-century dukes and marquises--tried to close up their ranks and to differentiate themselves from the plutocracy of the Chaussee d'Antin, who copied their manners, with an added magnificence of display which those they imitated could not afford. In the one camp the antique bronzes, gildings, and carvings of a bygone art were retained with pious veneration; in the other, pictures, carpets, Jacob chairs and sofas, mirrors, and time-pieces, and the gold and silver plate were all in lavish style, indicative of their owner's ampler means. One feature of the pre-Revolution era was revived in the feminine /salons/, which regained most, if not the whole, of their pristine renown. The Hotel de la Rochefoucauld of Madame Ancelot became a second Hotel de Rambouillet, where the classical Parseval-Grandmaison, who spent twenty years over his poem /Philippe-Auguste/, held armistice with the young champion of the Romantic school, Victor Hugo. The Princess de Vaudemont received her guests in Paris during the winter, and at Suresnes during the summer; and her friend the Duchess de Duras' /causeries/ were frequented by such men as Cuvier, Humboldt, Talleyrand, Mole, de Villele, Chateaubriand, and Villemain. Other circles existed in the houses of the Dukes Pasquier and de Broglie, the countess Merlin, and Madame de Mirbel.
With the re-establishment of peace, literary and toilet pre- occupations began to assert their claims. The /Ourika/ of the Duchess de Duras took Paris by storm. Her heroine, the young Senegal negress, gave her name to dresses, hats, and bonnets. Everything was /Ourika/. The prettiest Parisian woman yearned to be black, and regretted not having been born in darkest Africa. Anglomania in men's clothes prevailed throughout the reign of Louis XVIII., yet mixed with other modes. "Behold an up-to-date dandy," says a writer of the epoch; "all extremes meet in him. You shall see him Prussian by the stomach, Russian by his waist, English in his coat-tails and collar, Cossack by the sack that serves him as trousers, and by his fur. Add to these things Bolivar hats and spurs, and the moustaches of a counter- skipper, and you have the most singular harlequin to be met with on the face of the globe."
Among the masses there were changes just as striking. For the moment militarism had disappeared, to the people's unfeigned content, and the Garde Nationale, composed of pot-bellied tradesmen, alone recalled the bright uniforms of the Empire. To make up for the soldier excitements of the /Petit Caporal/, attractions of all kinds tempted the citizen to enjoy himself after his day's toil was finished--menagerie, mountebanks, Franconi circus, Robertson the conjurer in the Jardin des Capucines. At the other end of the city, in the Boulevard du Temple, were Belle Madeleine, the seller of Nanterre cakes, famous throughout Europe, the face contortionist Valsuani, Miette in his egg-dance, Curtius' waxworks. By each street corner were charlatans of one or another sort exchanging jests with the passers-by. It was the period when the Prudhomme type was created, so common in all the skits and caricatures of the day. One of the greatest pleasures of the citizen under the Restoration was to mock at the English. Revenge for Waterloo was found in written and spoken satires. Huge was the success of Sewrin's and Dumersan's /Anglaises pour rire/, with Brunet and Potier travestied as /grandes dames/, dancing a jig so vigorously that they lost their skirts. The same species of /revanche/ was indulged in when Lady Morgan, the novelist, came to France, seeking material for a popular book describing French customs. Henri Beyle (Stendhal) hoaxed her by acting as her cicerone and filling her note-books with absurd information, which she accepted in good faith and carried off as fact. On Sundays the most respectable families used to resort to the /guinguettes/, or /bastringues/, of the suburbs. Belleville had its celebrated Desnoyers establishment. At the Maine gate Mother Sagnet's was the meeting-place of budding artists and grisettes. At La Villette, Mother Radig, a former canteen woman, long enjoyed popularity among her patrons of both sexes. All these scenes are depicted in certain