By a very natural illusion, he paused twenty times to salute people of familiar appearance; but no one recognized him.
After a walk of five hours he reached the Place du Carrousel. The hôtel de Nantes was no longer there; but the Louvre had been erected instead. Fougas employed a quarter of an hour in regarding this monument of architecture, and half an hour in contemplating two Zouaves of the guard who were playing piquet. He inquired if the Emperor was in Paris; whereupon his attention was called to the flag floating over the Tuilleries.
"Good!" said he. "But first I must get some new clothes."
He took a room in a hotel on the Rue Saint Honoré, and asked a waiter which was the most celebrated tailor in Paris. The waiter handed him a Business Directory. Fougas hunted out the Emperor's bootmaker, shirtmaker, hatter, tailor, barber, and glovemaker. He took down their names and addresses in Clementine's pocket-book, after which he took a carriage and set out.
As he had a small and shapely foot, he found boots ready-made without any difficulty. He was promised, too, that all the linen he required should be sent home in the evening. But when he came to explain to the hatter what sort of an apparatus he intended to plant on his head, he encountered great difficulties. His ideal was an enormous hat, large at the crown, small below, broad in the brim, and curved far down behind and before; in a word, the historic heirloom to which the founder of Bolivia gave his name long ago. The shop had to be turned upside down, and all its recesses searched, to find what he wanted.
"At last," cried the hatter, "here's your article. If it's for a stage dress, you ought to be satisfied; the comic effect can be depended upon."
Fougas answered dryly, that the hat was much less ridiculous than all those which were then circulating around the streets of Paris.
At the celebrated tailor's, in the Rue de la Paix, there was almost a battle.
"No, monsieur," said Alfred, "I'll never make you a frogged surtout and a pair of trousers à la Cosaque! Go to Babin, or Morean, if you want a carnival dress; but it shall never be said that a man of as good figure as yours left our establishment caricatured."
"Thunder and guns!" retorted Fougas. "You're a head taller than I am, Mister Giant, but I'm a colonel of the Grand Empire, and it won't do for drum-majors to give orders to colonels!"