General Discussions

Not only in the villages around Paris, but throughout the whole of France, and even on the banks of the Lake of Geneva, the violet was, immediately after his exile, known to be a secret symbol by which the partisans of Bonaparte denoted their chief, and recognized each other. They wore rings of a violet colour, with the device, ‘Elle reparaitra au printemps’ [It will re-appear in spring]. When they asked, ‘Aimez vous le violette!’ [Are you fond of the violet?], if the answer was ‘Oui,’ [Yes] they inferred that the answerer was not a confederate. But if the answer was ‘Eh bien’ [Ah! Well], they recognized a brother, initiated in the secrets of the conspiracy; and they completed his sentence, ‘Elle reparaitra au printemps.’Similar secret symptoms, less important for their professed purposes of secrecy, than as a romantic garniture of conspiracy, calculated to excite the imagination, and peculiarly adapted in that respect to the character of Frenchmen, had been employed a twelvemonth before by the partisans of the House of Bourbon. A royalist then sounded any man, of whom he entertained hopes, by saying Deli: if the answer was vrance, the recognition of the principle was reciprocal and satisfactory. (1)

Tumult and disorder prevailed in the streets, which were soon filled with newly arrived troops, and the soldiers and populace were alike decorated with a bunch of violets.That lovely and earliest flower of spring, the symbol of timid beauty, and the soft harbinger of summer, had been transformed into the badge of a sanguinary faction. The military, who were initiated in the secret of Bonaparte’s intended return in the spring, had applied to him the nick-name of Le Père la Violette. Rings of a violet colour had been worn by his party, and the name of the violet was pronounced with other words of mysterious import, and veiled, like the modest flower itself, from general observation. But on the morning of the 21st March, the guilty, the triumphant violet appeared glaring in the button-hole of every Bonapartist’s coat, or stuck into his hat, with all the ostentation of an order, or a cockade. (2)

Early in the morning of the 21st, the shop-keepers of Paris were busily employed in changing their signs. Every where the crested lily disappeared, and the victorious eagle again stretched over the portals his terrific wings. The newspapers, bearing the stamp of the eagle, proclaimed the entry of the Emperor Napoleon on the preceding evening into his capital. The streets were filled with newly arrived troops, who, with the populace, were decorated with a bunch of violets, the badge of fidelity to Bonaparte. (3)