while Napoleon smiled maliciously.

The next day the Emperor went to Paris to hold a grand reception at the
Tuileries, for he was not a man to postpone the enjoyment of the splendor
which his satisfied ambition could draw from his new title. In this
palace, where had ruled the Committee of Public Safety, where the
Convention had sat, whence Robespierre had departed in triumph to preside
over the festival in honor of the Supreme Being, nothing was heard but the
titles of Emperor, Empress, My Lord, Prince, Princess, Imperial Highness,
Most Serene Highness. It was asserted that Bonaparte had cut up the red
caps to make the ribbons of the Legions of Honor. The most fanatical
Revolutionists had become conservative as soon as they had anything to
preserve. The Empire was but a few hours old, and already the new-born
court was alive with the same rivalries, jealousies, and vanities that
fill the courts of the oldest monarchies. It was like Versailles, in the
reign of Louis XIV., in the Gallery of Mirrors, or in the drawing-room of
the Oeil de Boeuf. It would have taken a Dangeau to record, hour by hour,
the minute points of etiquette. The Emperor walked, spoke, thought, acted,
like a monarch of an old line. To nothing does a man so readily adapt
himself as to power. One who has been invested with the highest rank is
sure to imagine himself eternal; to think that he has always held it and
will always keep it. Indeed, how is it possible to escape intoxication by
the fumes of perpetual incense? How can a man tell the truth to himself
when there is no one about him courageous enough to tell it to him? When
the press is muzzled, and public power rests only on general approval,
when there is no slave even to remind the triumphant hero, as in the
ancient ovations, that he is only a man, how is it possible to avoid being
infatuated by one's greatness and not to imagine one's self the absolute
master of one's destiny? The new Caesar met with no resistance. He was to
publish scornfully in the _Moniteur_ the protest of Louis XVIII. against