sisters' ambition childish, but it amused him; and if they had to cry a
little at first, he finally granted them what they wanted.

May 19, after the family dinner, Madame Murat was more and more distressed
at not being a Princess, when she was a Bonaparte by birth, while Madame
Joseph and Madame Louis, one of whom was a Clary, the other a Beauharnais,
bore that title, and burst out into complaints and reproaches. "Why," she
asked of her all-powerful brother, "why condemn me and my sisters to
obscurity, to contempt, while covering strangers with honors and
dignities?" At first these words annoyed Napoleon. "In fact," he
exclaimed, "judging from your pretensions, one would suppose that we
inherited the crown from the late King our father." At the end of the
interview, Madame Murat, not satisfied with crying, fainted away. Napoleon
softened at once, and a few days later there appeared a notification in
the _Moniteur_ that henceforth the Emperor's sisters should be called
Princesses and Imperial Highnesses.

The Empress's Maid of Honor was Madame de La Rochefoucauld; her Lady of
the Bedchamber was Madame de Lavalette. Her Ladies of the Palace, whose
number was soon raised to twelve, and later still more augmented, were at
first only four: Madame de Talhouet, Madame de Lucay, Madame de Lauriston,
and Madame de Remusat. These ladies, too, aroused the hottest jealousies,
and soon they gave rise to a sort of parody of the questions of vanity
that agitated the Emperor's family. The women who were admitted to the
Empress's intimacy could never console themselves for the privileges
accorded to the Ladies of the Palace.

In essentials all courts are alike. On a greater or smaller scale they are
rank with the same pettinesses, the same chattering gossip, the same
trivial squabbles as the porter's lodge, ante-chambers, and servants'