-you have done ill. Eleven-twelfths of you are
well-intentioned, the others, and above all M. Laine, are factious
intriguers, devoted to England, to all my enemies, and corresponding
through the channel of the advocate Deseze with the Bourbons. Return to
your Departments, and feel that my eye will follow you; you have
endeavoured to humble me, you may kill me, but you shall not dishonour
me. You make remonstrances; is this a time, when the stranger invades
our provinces, and 200,000 Cossacks are ready to overflow our country?
There may have been petty abuses; I never connived at them. You, M.
Raynouard, you said that. Prince Massena robbed a man at Marseilles of
his house. You lie! The General took possession of a vacant house, and
my Minister shall indemnify the proprietor. Is it thus that you dare
affront a Marshal of France who has bled for his country, and grown gray
in victory? Why did you not make your complaints in private to me? I
would have done you justice. We should wash our dirty linen at home,
and not drag it out before the world. You, call yourselves
Representatives of the Nation. It is not true; you are only Deputies of
the Departments; a small portion of the State, inferior to the Senate,
inferior even to the Council of State. The Representatives of the
People! I am alone the Representative of the People. Twice have
24,000,000 of French called me to the throne: which of you durst
undertake such a burden? It had already overwhelmed (ecrase), your
Assemblies, and your Conventions, your Vergniauds and your Guadets, your
Jacobins and your Girondins. They are all dead! What, who are you?
nothing--all authority is in the Throne; and what is the Throne? this
wooden frame covered with velvet?--no, I am the Throne! You have added
wrong to reproaches. You have talked of concessions--concessions that
even my enemies dared not ask! I suppose if they asked Champaigne you
would have had me give them La Brie besides; but in four months I will
conquer peace, or I shall be dead! You advise! how dare you debate of
such high matters (de si graves interets)! You have put me in the front
of the battle as the cause of war--it is infamous (c'est une atrocite).
In all your committees you have excluded the friends of Government--
extraordinary commission--committee of finance--committee of the
address, all, all my enemies. M. Laine, I repeat it, is a traitor; he
is a wicked man, the others are mere intriguers. I do justice to the