And the Comte de La Vallette, writing to M. Cuvillier Fleury, says:
"I saw our five kings, dressed in the robes of Francis I., his hat,
his pantaloons, and his lace: the face of La Reveilliere looked like
a cork upon two pins, with the black and greasy hair of Clodion. M.
de Talleyrand, in pantaloons of the colour of wine dregs, sat in a
folding chair at the feet of the Director Barras, in the Court of
the Petit Luxembourg, and gravely presented to his sovereigns as
ambassador from the Grand Duke of Tuscany, while the French were
eating his master's dinner, from the soup to the cheese. At the
right hand there were fifty musicians and singers of the Opera,
Laine, Lays, Regnault, and the actresses, not all dead of old age,
roaring a patriotic cantata to the music of Mehul. Facing them, on
another elevation, there were two hundred young and beautiful women,
with their arms and bosoms bare, all in ecstasy at the majesty of
our Pentarchy and the happiness of the Republic. They also wore
tight flesh-coloured pantaloons, with rings on their toes. That was
a sight that never will be seen again. A fortnight after this
magnificent fete, thousands of families wept over their banished
fathers, forty-eight departments were deprived of their
representatives, and forty editors of newspapers were forced to go
and drink the waters of the Elbe, the Synamary or the Ohio! It
would be a curious disquisition to seek to discover what really were
at that time the Republic and Liberty."]


He knew that the Clichy party demanded his dismissal and arrest. He was
given to understand that Dumolard was one of the most decided against
him, and that, finally, the royalist party was on the point of
triumphing.