l news of what was
going on at Paris. It was brought us by M. ***. The unskilful manner
in which the royalist party superintended the police of the roads, was
truly astonishing. Not one of its emissaries escaped us, while ours
went and came without any obstruction. Rage or fear must have turned
the brains of all the royalists. M. *** assured the Emperor, that the
national guard appeared determined to defend the king, and that the
king had declared, he would not quit the Tuileries. "If he choose to
wait for me there," said Napoleon, "I have no objection: but I doubt
it much. He suffers himself to be lulled by the boastings of the
emigrants; and when I get within twenty leagues of Paris, they will
abandon him, as the nobles of Lyons abandoned the Count d'Artois. What
indeed could he do with the old puppets that are about him? One of our
grenadiers would knock down a hundred of them with the butt-end of
his musket.... The national guard shouts at a distance; when I am at
the barriers it will be silent. Its business is not to raise a civil
war, but to maintain peace and order in the country. The majority is
sound; there is nothing rotten in it but a few officers; and them I
will expel. Return to Paris; tell my friends not to implicate
themselves, and within ten days my grenadiers will mount guard at the
Tuileries: go."

We arrived at Chalons on the 14th, at an early hour. It was terrible
weather, yet the whole population had come out of the city, to see the
Emperor a few minutes the sooner. On approaching the walls, he
perceived artillery and ammunition waggons, and was surprised at it.
"They were intended," said the people, "to act against you; but we
have stopped them on their way, and present them to you."--"That's
right, my lads; you have always been good citizens."

He was well pleased, to find himself among the Chalonese, and received
them with much affection and regard. "I have not forgotten," said he,
"that you resisted the enemy for forty days, and valiantly defended
the passage of the Saone. Had all the French possessed your courage
and patriotism, not a single foreigner would have escaped out of
France." He expressed to them his desire of knowing the brave men, who
had most distinguished themselves; and on their unanimous testimony,
he granted on the spot the decoration of the Legion of Honour to the
mayor of St. Jean Delonne. "It was for the brave men like him and
you," said he to them, "that I instituted the