Their first house in Paris was a sort of imitation cottage, after the execrable taste of the day, in the Champs-Elysées, from which they moved into a hôtel in the rue de la Victoire, which was for some time the resort of all the chiefs of their political party, and the scene of constant contention between the Thermidoriens and the remnants of the Montagne. The discussions were generally political, and often violent; they would have been abhorrent to the well-bred society of former days.
Barras was the leading spirit in this society, and for some time he was at Térèzia’s feet. But if Tallien was not a great man, neither was Barras; amongst all the unscrupulous ruffians of the revolutionary party there did not appear to be one superior enough to his fellows to command or lead them.
And yet there was one: “a young, pale, sickly-looking Italian,” who lived in a third-rate inn, wore a shabby uniform, and frequented the parties of Barras and the rest. He was not a conspicuous figure nor a particularly honoured guest; his military career had been apparently ruined by the spite of his enemies; he seemed to have no money, no connections, and no prospects. But in a few years all of them—all France and nearly all Europe—were at his feet, for it was Napoleon Buonaparte.
NAPOLEON
His career, however, was even now beginning; and not long after Térèzia, in the height of her beauty and power with Paris at her feet, rejected his love-making but accepted his friendship, he was sent to Italy and began the series of triumphs which were to raise him to the throne of France.
As time went on Térèzia found that her influence as well as that of Tallien was rapidly declining. Her salon was not at all likely to last long. Those of the court and of society before the Revolution had been of an entirely different order; held by women who, besides their beauty or other attractions, were in an assured position, surrounded by well-known connections and friends, forming an intimate society sure to be met at their houses, and always ready to carry on conversation, avoid all topics likely to give offence, and make themselves generally agreeable. Nobody was admitted there who was not accustomed to the usages of the world or who would interfere with the harmony and general tone of the house. People went there, not to engage in political discussions or to make love to their hostess, but to spend a pleasant evening and meet the friends they knew and liked. These salons continued to be frequented by their usual guests year after year without any more change than the lapse of time inevitably brings.
Laure Permon, Duchesse d’Abrantès, than whom no one was a better judge of these matters, observes—
“To ‘receive’ is to have an open house, where one can go every evening with the certainty of finding it lighted up and inhabited, the host ready to receive one with pleasure and courtesy. For that, it is not an absolute necessity to have a superior intellect, to descend from Charlemagne, or to possess two hundred thousand livres de rentes; but it is absolutely necessary to have knowledge of the world and cultivation, qualities which everybody does not possess.”