France might hold its fantastic State ballet, the Fête of the Supreme, indeed might go stark mad, and all Law and Order and Reason be overthrown, but one man, the greatest world-man known to history, was gathering strength to bring order out of chaos, to remake a nation and a nation’s laws; to set the world a-wondering if he should master it.
Strangest of all, perhaps, that he, the great Napoleon, should have found time to flirt with a ballet-dancer—the famous Bigottini, of whom the Countess Nesselrode in her letters said that the effect she produced with her dancing and miming was so moving as to make even the most hardened man weep.
But she seemed rather to have amused Napoleon, more especially when, having told the President of the Legislative Chamber, Fontanes, to send her a present, she received a collection of French classics; and on being asked later by Napoleon—unaware of the nature of the gift—if she was content with Fontanes’ choice, she exclaimed that she was not entirely.
“How so?” asked Napoleon.
Bigottini’s reply must be given in the original.
“Il m’a payée en livres; j’aurais mieux aimé en francs.”
In spite of the library, Mlle. Bigottini became a millionaire—in francs.