The Guard’s bugles, which rang out in the fortresses, still woke Portoferraio, and in the evening the rubbish-collector’s trumpet, outside every door, brought the day to a close. But everything softened once Princess Pauline had been definitively installed on the island. The life of the people of Elba became less military. A Paris fashion-designer opened a trinket shop near the harbour and it prospered, because there was a succession of parties. There was dancing at the Mulini Palace, in the drawing-rooms and the public squares newly lit by new street lights. ‘His Majesty is devoting himself to the decoration of the town, as well as road-building and defence,’ Octave wrote in his notebooks. ‘Princess Pauline is setting the tone. On a little square, half-way up the slope, the church of St Francis was used as a store of food and clothing for the garrison, and now the Empress has decided to turn it into a theatre. As we are not rich, because the salt-works and the vines bring in little revenue, and more particularly because the King of France is not paying the two million promised in income by the Treaty of Fontainebleau, the Emperor has listened to good old Peyrusse, who has wonderfully imaginative ways of saving money.
