and the Prefect presented each a project. The
assembly was discussing minutely the terms of them, when an officer of
the gendarmes, an old soldier of the Imperial armies, exclaimed rudely,
"Gentlemen, be quick, otherwise all deliberation will become useless.
Believe me, I speak from experience; Napoleon always follows very
closely the couriers who announce his arrival." Napoleon was in fact
close at hand. After a short moment of hesitation, two companies of
sappers which had been dispatched to cut down a bridge, joined their
former commander. A battalion of infantry soon followed their example.
Finally, upon the very glacis of the fortress, in presence of the
numerous population which crowned the ramparts, the fifth regiment of
the line to a man assumed the tricolour cockade, substituted for the
white flag the eagle,--witness of twenty battles,--which it had
preserved, and departed with shouts of _Vive l'Empereur!_ After such a
commencement, to attempt to hold the country would have been an act of
folly. General Marchand caused accordingly the gates of the city to be
shut. He still hoped, notwithstanding the evidently hostile disposition
of the inhabitants, to sustain a siege with the sole assistance of the
third regiment of engineers, the fourth regiment of artillery, and some
weak detachments of infantry, which had not abandoned him.

From that moment, the civil authority had disappeared. Fourier thought
then that he might quit Grenoble, and repair to Lyons, where the princes
had assembled together. At the second restoration, this departure was
imputed to him as a crime. He was very near being brought before a court
of assizes, or even a provost's court. Certain personages pretended that
the presence of the Prefect of the chief place of l'Isere might have
conjured the storm; that the resistance might have been more animated,
better arranged. People forgot that nowhere, and at Grenoble even less
than anywhere else, was it possible to organize even a pretext of
resistance. Let us see then, finally, how this martial city,--the fall
of which Fourier might have prevented by his mere presence,--let us see
how it was taken. It is eight o'clock in the evening. The inhabitants
and the soldiers garrison the ramparts. Napoleon precedes his little
troop by some steps; he advances even to the gate; he knocks (be not
alarmed, Gentlemen, it is not a battle which I am about to describe,)
_he knocks with his snuff-box!_ "Who is there?"