[8] Pp. 88-96.
[9] To this gentleman he dedicated, in 1843, the third edition of his "Mercantile Law." Within a very few months of each other, both of them died—Mr. Richards himself having, as he once told me, ruined his health by his intense and laborious prosecution of his profession. He had found it necessary to retire a year or two before his death. His brother, also, Mr. Griffith Richards, Q.C., one of the ablest members of the Chancery Bar, recently died under similar circumstances.
[10] "Law Magazine," N.S. Vol. lxx. p. 183.
[11] His chambers were No. 2, Mitre Court Buildings, to which he had removed from No. 12, King's Bench Walk, about two years before.
[12] Memoirs of General Pépé. Written by himself. London, 1846.
[13] "The Theatres of Paris. By Charles Hervey." London and Paris, 1846.
[14] Doubtless Gardoni was apprehensive of some such deterioration of his voice, for he has just left the Académie, after much opposition on the part of the manager, and has made a highly successful appearance at the Italian opera.
[15] Innumerable jests and lampoons circulated at the time of Napoleon's separation from Josephine, and second marriage. Conscious of the unworthy part he acted, the Emperor was greatly galled by them. "The keenest and most remarkable of these," says a German author who was in Paris at the time, "is unquestionably a Chanson Poissarde, of which hundreds of copies have been distributed, and which thousands have got by heart. Its author, in spite of Napoleon's fury, and of the zealous exertions of the police, has not been discovered. Several hundred persons have been arrested for copying or repeating it; but its original source remains unknown." It consists of nine verses, in the vulgar and mutilated French of the Paris halles. A couple of them will give a notion of the sly wit of the whole. They refer, of course, to the Emperor and to his future bride, Maria Louisa of Austria:—
Pour ell' il s'est fait l'aut' jour
Pemd'en bel habit d'dimanche,
Et des diamants tout autour,
Près d' sa figur comm' ça tranche!
La p'tite luronne, j'en somm' sûr,
Aim' mieux l'présent que l'futur.
Ah! comm' ell' va s'amuser,
C' te princess' qui nous arrive!
Nous, j'allons boir' et danser,
N's enrouer á crier: Vive!
Ell, s' ra l'idol' d' la nation,
J' l'ons lu dans l'proclamation.