On 19 March, the Tuileries was evacuated: a courier was sent to carry this news to Napoleon, who was at Fontainebleau. People expected him all day long on the 20th; they felt confident that he would make a triumphal entry along the boulevards. Mars and Georges had taken a window at Frascati's. They wore hats of white straw, with enormous bunches of violets in them. They attracted much notice, for it was known that they had been persecuted for a year at the Comédie-Française on account of their attachment to the emperor.
The bouquets of violets symbolised the month of March: the King of Rome's birthday was in the month of March, and also the return of Napoleon. From that day violets became a badge. People wore violets in all sorts of fashions—in hats, hanging by their sides, as trimmings to dresses. Some, more fanatic than others, wore a gold violet in their buttonholes, as an order of chivalry. There was quite as great a reaction against the Bourbons as there had been in their favour a year before.
When Talma, Mars and Georges appeared, they were overwhelmed with applause. Georges saw the emperor again at the Tuileries. By dint of his powerful character, Napoleon seemed to have put everything behind him. One might have said he had not left the château of Catherine de Médicis save, as had been his custom, to bring back news of a fresh victory. The only thing that distressed him was that they had taken away some of his favourite pieces of furniture.
He missed greatly a little boudoir, hung with tapestry that had been worked by Marie-Louise and the ladies of the Court.
"Would you believe it, my dear," he said to Georges, "I found asparagus stalks on the arm-chairs!" This was the worst with which he reproached Louis XVIII.
The return of the god was of as short duration as the apparition of a ghost. Waterloo succeeded Leipzig; Saint-Helena, the isle of Elba. It was a more terrible, a more melancholy counterpart! Leipzig was but a wound, Waterloo was death; the isle of Elba was but exile, Saint-Helena was the tomb!
One might almost say that he carried everything away with him. We again turn over the leaves of the repertory of the Théâtre-Français and we do not find any play of importance produced throughout the year 1815. The lilies reappeared and the poor violets were exiled;—with the violets, Georges exiled herself. She went to the provinces, where she remained for several years; she reappeared in 1823, more beautiful than she had ever been. She was then thirty-eight.
I will find an opportunity to pass in review the men of letters and the literary works of the Empire, to which, on account of my callow youth, I have scarcely referred, during the period in which these men and their works flourished. Indeed, when Georges made her début, the two men who were to add to her reputation by means of Christine, Bérengère and Marguerite de Bourgogne, Marie Tudor and Lucrèce Borgia, were still wailing at their mothers' breasts. Taken all round, whatever people may say, these five rôles were Georges' greatest successes. Meanwhile, on 12 April 1823, the great actress played in Comte Julien at the Odéon.