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In a sense it would seem as if the bete populaire, becoming increasingly drunk with the consciousness of its own power, is elatedly preoccupied in cutting off its own nose, tying itself up into knots, and kicking itself in the rear, proclaiming simultaneously and in triumphant tones, "Observe how powerful I am. I can pass laws making ipecac a compulsory diet."
"Thyse byshopppes and thyse archebyshoppes, Ye shall them bete and bynde," the people applauded resistance to the extortion of the church. In Robin's defiance of the law and its officers, they applauded resistance to the tyranny of the higher classes.
With the return of the Bourbons, Mme. Bonaparte was free to tread the soil of France, and among the throngs of lovely women who entered Paris after Waterloo she was no inconspicuous figure. Portraits and contemporaries represent her as uncommonly beautiful the spirited head crowned with waving brown hair; large, lustrous, liquid hazel eyes, promising a tender sensibility that did not exist; a nose of delicate Greek outline; mouth and rounded chin nests for Cupid; arms, bust and shoulders to satisfy a sculptor. Surgeon-General Larrey, the medical attendant at St. Helena, meeting Mme. Bonaparte at dinner in Paris, requested their host, Count Rochefoucauld, to intercede with her for the privilege of looking at the back of her neck. After studying her a moment, he said, "It is extraordinary! The bend of the neck, the contour of face, the pose of the head, even the manner of rising from her chair, are singular in their resemblance to the emperor." The duchess D'Abrantes (Mme. Junot) describes in her Memoirs a meeting with Jerome, "who showed us a fine miniature of his wife, the features exquisitely beautiful, with a resemblance to those of the princess Borghese, which Jerome said he and many Frenchmen in Baltimore had remarked. 'Judge, he said, replacing the portrait in his bosom, 'if I can abandon a being like her! I only wish the emperor would consent to see her, to hear her voice, but for a single moment. For myself, I am resolved not to yield." Walpole's friend, Miss Berry, met Mme. Bonaparte in the salon of Mme. Récamier, "who sat on a chaise longue with a headache and twelve or fifteen men, only two ladies being present Mme. Moreau and Mrs. Patterson, the ex-wife of Jerome Bonaparte, who is exceedingly pretty, without grace and not at all shy.... Mme. Récamier is the beauty of this new world, if she can be called handsome: her manners are doucereuses, thinking much of herself, with perfect carelessness about others, for, besides being a beauty, she has pretensions to bel esprit: they may be as well founded as the other, yet not sufficient to burn her for a witch." Now, Miss Berry called the black-Berry, in contradistinction to her duller sister, the goose-Berry was jaundiced in her estimation of both beauties, and Mme. Bonaparte bears tribute to "that rare loveliness of temper and tact in displaying the good qualities even of rivals that were potent weapons in Récamier's quiver of charms." Miss Berry's dictum is also outweighed by the homage of Mme. de Staël's envying sigh, that she "would willingly exchange her genius for Récamier's beauty." Mme. Récamier was anxious that Mme. Bonaparte should know "Corinne." "No, no," she replied: "De Staël est une colosse qui m'écraserait; elle me trouverait une jolie bête et je ne veux pas être tuée
The spirit of "L'Etat c'est moi" survived in Mirabeau's "never name to me that bete of a word 'impossible';" in the first Napoleon's threat to the Austrian ambassador, "I will break your empire like this vase"; in Nelson turning his blind eye to the signal of retreat at Copenhagen, and Wellington fencing Torres Vedras against the world: it lingered in Nicholas the Czar, and has found perhaps its latest political representative in Prince Bismarck.
And his publishers placed on the covers of his compositions the design that symbolized the great things they thought the man achieving, and the high heavens for which they believed him bound. The success was momentary only. Long before he died, the world had found in Max Reger its musical bête noire. Closer acquaintance with his art had not ingratiated him with his public.
"It does not extend to Caliban, or even to the hero of La Belle et La Bete; but I do believe, that, in a mind so well regulated as yours, esteem may certainly in time be improved into love. I will tell Mr. Vincent so, my dear." "No, my dear Lady Anne! no; you must not indeed you must not.
What did you think of my child when you forced your way into my life, when you made me think of you ah, quel bete what a coward and beast you are!" "No, I am not all coward, though I may be a beast," he answered. "I didn't think of your child when I began to talk to you as I did. I was out for all I could get. I was the hunter. And you were the finest woman that I'd ever met and talked with; you "
Other untaught gifts she possessed, and the historic record is unimpeached as regards that child of genius, Jeanne d'Arc. "Ne me dites jamais cette bete de mot, impossible," said Napoleon: it is indeed a stupid word where genius is concerned.
If she wrote her signature differently from her usual manner, it is not my fault. It only shows that the queen was cunning enough to secure an alibi, so to speak, for her signature, and to leave a rear door open for herself, through which she could slip with her exalted name, in case the affair was discovered, and leave me to be her bete de souffrance.
"I'll be d d if I do," said I. "Comment donc?" said the man. "Tais-toi bête" said I, "ou je te brulerai la cervelle."
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