to politics, I had read with deep interest
the newspapers I received in my retreat, since the great political change
to which the name of the Restoration was given; and it seemed to me to
need only the simplest common-sense to see the marked difference which
existed between the government which had been overthrown and the new. In
all departments I saw a succession of titled men take the places of the
long list of distinguished men who had given under the Empire so many
proofs of merit and courage; but I was far from thinking, notwithstanding
the large number of discontented, that the fortunes of the Emperor and
the wishes of the army would ever restore him to that throne which he had
voluntarily abdicated in order that he might not be the cause of a civil
war in Dance. Therefore, it would be impossible to describe my
astonishment, and the multiplicity of varied feelings which agitated me,
when I received the first news of the landing of the Emperor on the coast
of Provence. I read with enthusiasm the admirable proclamation in which
he announced that his eagles would fly from steeple to steeple, and that
he himself would follow so closely in his triumphal march from the Bay of
Juan to Paris.

Here I must make a confession, which is, that only since I had left the
Emperor, had I fully comprehended the immensity of his greatness.
Attached to his service almost from the beginning of the Consulate, at a
time when I was still very young, he had grown, so to speak, without my
having perceived it, and I had above all seen in him, from the nature of
my duties, the excellent master rather than the great man; consequently,
in this instance the effects of distance were very different from what it
usually produces. It was with difficulty I could realize, and I am often
astonished to-day in recalling the frank candor with which I had dared to
defend to the Emperor what I knew to be the truth; his kindness, however,
seemed to encourage me in this, for often, instead of becoming irritated
by my vehemence, he said to me gently, with a benevolent smile, "Come,
come! M. Constant, don't excite yourself." Adorable kindness in a man
of such elevated rank! Ah, well I this was the only impression it made
on me in the privacy of his chamber, but since then I have learned to
estimate it at its true value.

On learning that the Emperor was to be restored to us, my first impulse
was to repair at once to the palace, that I might be there on his
a