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The pathetic figure of Louis XVI's daughter, the Duchess of Angoulême, was seen amid the forced gaieties of the new régime, and Madame de Stäel haunted the court of Louis XVIII, forgetting her late revolutionary sentiments. Napoleon grew very weary of his inaction on the isle of Elba. He had spent all his life in military pursuits and missed the companionship of soldiers.
Or, more undoubtedly, some pretty little Pompadour overcome by that Parisian infirmity so pleasantly described by M. de Maurepas in that quatrain which cost him his protracted disgrace and certainly contributed to the disasters of Louis XVI's reign: "Iris, we love those features sweet, Your graces all are fresh and free; And flowerets spring beneath your feet, Where naught, alas! but flowers are seen."
"How do you know that?" "By this, that I found on the spot where was the last wreck." Captain Nemo showed me a tin-plate box, stamped with the French arms, and corroded by the salt water. He opened it, and I saw a bundle of papers, yellow but still readable. They were the instructions of the naval minister to Commander La Perouse, annotated in the margin in Louis XVI's handwriting.
Like the provincial 'grandes seigneurs' of Louis XVI's reign, they were gay, dissipated and turbulent; "accomplished" in the superficial acquirements that made the "gentleman" one hundred years ago, but are grotesquely out of place in this sensible, solid age, which demands that a man shall be of use, and not merely for show.
The Allies issued at Frankfort their famous manifesto "Peace with France but war against the Empire." They compelled Napoleon to abdicate, and restored the Bourbon line. A court was formed for Louis XVIII at the Tuileries, while Napoleon was sent to Elba. Louis XVI's brother, the Count of Artois, came back, still admired by the faded beauties of the Restoration.
Like the provincial 'grandes seigneurs' of Louis XVI's reign, they were gay, dissipated and turbulent; "accomplished" in the superficial acquirements that made the "gentleman" one hundred years ago, but are grotesquely out of place in this sensible, solid age, which demands that a man shall be of use, and not merely for show.
Square grooved legs also appeared in this type. The same grooves are found on round tapering legs of Louis XVI's time. In fact that type of leg is far more typical of the Louis XVI period than the cabriole or square legs grooved, but one sees all three styles.
She took out the box and showed the pretty jeweled things, his cross of the Legion d'Honneur, his Papal decoration, and several foreign orders, her father, it seems, was an officer in the army, a great friend of the Orleans family, and grandson of an officer of Louis XVI's Imperial Guard. She begged me to join them in an effort to escape to the south.
The allies immediately reinstated the Bourbon dynasty on the throne of France in the person of Louis XVI's younger brother, the count of Provence, who became Louis XVIII. They first restricted France to the boundaries that she had had at the beginning of 1792, but later deprived her of Savoy as a punishment for yielding to the domination of Napoleon after his return from Elbe.
The little boys and girls of Louis XVI's reign were dressed in stiff court clothes almost as soon as they were old enough to talk, and were taught bows and curtsies, gallant words and dancing steps when other children would have been playing out-of-doors. As a result they grew up much alike, most of them merely fashion plates to decorate the royal palace at Versailles.