"Ours," he continued, "is named the Order of Filial Love; and, if you would witness the first inauguration, pass with these gentlemen into the small drawing-room."
Inauguration.
Decorations of the room.
Josephine entered the drawing-room with the youthful group, and found it very tastefully ornamented with garlands of ivy, roses, and laurels. Inscriptions, taken from the printed discourses or remarkable sayings of M. Beauharnais, were suspended upon the walls. Girandoles, with lighted tapers, brilliantly illuminated the room. An altar was erected, hung with festoons of flowers, and upon this altar was placed the full-length portrait of M. Beauharnais. Three crowns of white and red roses were suspended from the picture-frame, and in front were placed two vases with perfumes.
The oath.
The young gentlemen ranged themselves about the altar in perfect silence, and, at a concerted signal, eagerly unsheathed the swords which they wore at their sides, and, clasping hands, solemnly took the oath, "To love their parents, succor each other, and to defend their country." At this moment, Eugene, unfurling and waving a small banner, with its folds shaded the head of his father. "We then embraced each other," says Josephine, "mingling tears with smiles, and the most amiable disorder succeeded to the ceremonial of inauguration."
New organisation of social society.
The fascination of Josephine's person and address drew multitudes of friends around her, and her society was ever coveted. As time softened the poignancy of her past sorrows, she mingled more and more in the social circles of that metropolis where pleasure and gayety ever reign. The terrible convulsions of the times had thrown the whole fabric of society into confusion. Great efforts were now made to revive the festivities of former days. Two centers of society were naturally established. The first included that in which Josephine moved. It was composed of the remains of the ancient nobility, who had returned to Paris with the fragments of their families and their shattered fortunes. Rigid economy was necessary to keep up any appearance of elegance. But that polish of manners which almost invariably descends from an illustrious ancestry marked all their intercourse. The humiliations through which the nobles had passed had not diminished the exclusiveness of their tastes. The other circle was composed of merchants and bankers who had acquired opulence in the midst of the confiscations and storms of revolution. The passion for display was prominent in all their assemblies, as is necessarily the case with those whose passport to distinction is wealth.
The "Ball of the Victims."
Fashionable style of hair-dressing.
At the theaters and all the places of public festivity, there were presented studied memorials of the scenes of horror through which all had recently passed. One of the most fashionable and brilliant assemblies then known in Paris was called The Ball of the Victims. No one was admitted to this assembly who had not lost some near relative by the guillotine. The most fashionable style of dressing the hair was jocosely called "à la guillotine." The hair was arranged in the manner in which it had been adjusted by the executioner for the unimpeded operation of the ax. And thus, with songs, and dances, and laughter-moving jokes, they commemorated the bloody death of their friends.
A new insurrection.