Rose's _Vivat Imperator_, which had made such an impression on the
Coronation Day. After the concert, Prince Louis Bonaparte, Marshal Murat,
Eugene de Beauharnais, and Marshal Berthier opened the ball with the
Princesses. The Emperor walked twice around the hall, as if he were
reviewing troops. Then he sat down by the side of the Empress on a raised
platform, and withdrew before the end of the ball.

Besides all these entertainments there were the grand levees and concerts
at the Tuileries. The Hall of the Marshals was an impressive sight on
those evenings, filled, as it was, with young and pretty women, in
gorgeous dresses, and with men resplendent with stars, epaulettes,
feathered hats, and sword-belts set with diamonds. After the concert the
company would go to the Gallery of Diana, where the supper-tables were
set: that of the Empress, those of the Princesses, of the Lady of Honor,
of the Lady of the Bedchamber, of the Ladles of the Palace. "All these
tables," says the Duchess of Abrantes, "were occupied by women with roses
on their heads, and smiles on their lips, and often with tears in their
eyes; for vanity, everywhere triumphant, holds its court especially at
court. There, favor is everything, disgrace is everything. A chance word
or glance of the Emperor or Empress is a blow and a serious one. What,
then, must be the result of an invitation sent or withheld?"

During the concert the Empress made up the supper-table; that is to say,
chose the women who were to sit at her table, commissioning her
chamberlain to notify those she had selected. The Princesses did the same,
and the officers of their households likewise informed the women whom they
had chosen. There were but twelve places at the Empress's table; eight or
ten at those of the Princesses. When the chamberlains came to bring these
most welcome invitations, there fluttered through the eight hundred or
thousand women present at the concerts and grand levees an anxious emotion