for ever that grand enterprise; we have
enough of glory, we want repose.

"It is not ambition, that has brought me back to France: it is the
love of the country. I could have preferred the tranquillity of the
island of Elba to the cares of a throne, had I not known, that France
was unhappy, and had need of me.

"On setting foot on our dear France," continued he, after a few
unimportant answers from his auditors, "I made a vow to render it free
and happy: I bring nothing to it but benefits. I am returned to
protect and defend those interests, to which our revolution has given
birth: I return to concur with the representatives of the nation in a
family compact, that shall preserve for ever the liberty and the
rights of every Frenchman: henceforward it will be my ambition, and my
glory, to effect the happiness of the great people from whom I hold
every thing. I will not, like Louis XVIII., grant you a revocable
charter; I will give you an inviolable constitution, and it shall be
the work of the people, as well as of myself."

Such were his words. He pronounced them with an air of such
satisfaction, he appeared so confident of himself and of the future,
that a man would have thought himself criminal to suspect the purity
of his intentions, or to doubt the happiness he was about to secure to
France.

The language he held at Lyons we perceive was not the same, as that he
had uttered at Gap and at Grenoble. In the last-mentioned towns he
sought principally to excite in men's minds hatred of the Bourbons,
and the love of liberty: he had spoken as a citizen, rather than a
monarch. No formal declaration, not a single word, revealed his
intentions. It might as well have been supposed, that he thought of
restoring the republic, or the consulship, as the empire. At Lyons,
there was no longer any thing vague, any thing uncertain: he spoke as
a sovereign, and promised to give a national constitution. The idea of
the Champ de Mai had recurred to him.

Not one of us suspected the sincerity of the promises and resolves of
Napoleon.

Time, reflection, misfortune, the grand teacher of mankind, had
effected the most favourable changes in the principles of Napoleon.

Formerly, when unforeseen obstacles arose, suddenly to thwart his
projects, his passions, accustomed to no restraint, to respect no
bridle, burst forth with the fury of a raging sea: he spoke, he
ordered, he decided, as if he had been master of the earth and of the
el