Legion of Honour, and
not for emigrants pensioned by our enemies." When the audience was
ended, he said to me: "The mayor of Chalons is not come; yet it was I
who appointed him: but he is related to an ancient family, and
probably has his scruples. The inhabitants complain of him, and will
make him suffer for it. You must go and see him. If he object to you
his oath, tell him, that I absolve him from it; and make him sensible,
that, if he wait till he is freed from it by Louis XVIII., he will
wait a long time. Say to him, in short, what you please; I care little
about his visit; it is for his own sake I wish him to come. If he do
not come, the people will stone him to death after I am gone. Germain
was lucky to escape[60]; let his example be a lesson to him."

[Footnote 60: He attempted to harangue the
Chalonese, but they allowed him only time to take
to his heels.]

I repaired immediately to the municipality, where I found the mayor,
and a few municipal counsellors. He appeared to me a man of merit. I
informed him, that it was my usual office, to introduce to his Majesty
the municipal authorities; that I had observed with surprise, he had
not been as eager as the mayors of other cities, to pay his duty to
the Emperor; and that I was come to remove his fears, &c. He answered
me frankly, that he had great respect and admiration for Napoleon;
but, having sworn fealty to Louis XVIII., he thought it his duty to
keep his oath, till he was absolved from it. I had my answer ready.
"I, like you," said I, "consider perjury as the most degrading act, of
which man can be guilty. But it is necessary, to make a distinction
between a voluntary oath, and the stipulated oath, which people take
to their government. In the eye of reason, this oath is merely an act
of local submission; a pure and simple formality, which the monarch,
whoever he may be, has a right to require of his subjects; but which
cannot, as it ought not, enchain their persons and faith to
perpetuity. France, since 1789, has sworn by turns to be faithful to
royalty, to the convention, to the republic, to the directory, to the
consulship, to the empire, to the charter: if those Frenchmen, who
had taken an oath to royalty, had sought to oppose the establishment
of a republic, by way of acquitting themselves of their oaths; if
those, who had taken an oath to the republic, had opposed the
establishment of the empir