r the Consulate and during the first six years of the Empire,
whenever the Emperor had returned to Paris after a campaign, it was
because that campaign was finished, and the news of a peace concluded in
consequence of a victory had always preceded him. For a second time he
returned from Mayence under different circumstances. In this case, as on
the return from Smorghoni, he left the war still in progress, and
returned, not for the purpose of presenting to France the fruit of his
victories, but to demand new subsidies of men and money in order to
repair the defeat and losses sustained by our army. Notwithstanding this
difference in the result of our wars, the welcome accorded to his Majesty
by the nation was still the same, apparently at least; and the addresses
by the different towns of the interior were not less numerous, nor less
filled with expressions of devotion; and those especially who were the
prey of fears for the future showed themselves even more devoted than all
others, fearing lest their fatal premonitions should be discovered. For
my own part, it had never occurred to me that the Emperor could finally
succumb in the struggle he was maintaining; for my ideas had never
reached this point, and it is only in reflecting upon it since that I
have been able to comprehend the dangers which threatened him at the
period we had now reached. He was like a man who had passed the night on
the edge of a precipice, totally unaware of the danger to which he was
exposed until it was revealed by the light of day. Nevertheless, I may
say that every one was weary of the war, and that all those of my friends
whom I saw on the return from Mayence spoke to me of the need of peace.

Within the palace itself I heard many persons attached to the Emperor say
the same thing when he was not present, though they spoke very
differently in the presence of his Majesty. When he deigned to
interrogate me, as he frequently did, on what I had heard people say, I
reported to him the exact truth; and when in these confidential toilet
conversations of the Emperor I uttered the word peace, he exclaimed again
and again, "Peace! Peace! Ah! who can desire it more than I? There
are some, however, who do not desire it, and the more I concede the more
they demand."

An extraordinary event which took place the very day of his Majesty's
arrival at Saint-Cloud, when it became known, led to the belief that the
allies had conceived the idea of entering upon