the Duke of
Angouleme was already at Marseilles, organising the loyal Provencals,
and preparing to throw himself on Grenoble and cut off the retreat of
Buonaparte; and Louis continued to receive addresses full of loyalty and
devotion from the public bodies of Paris, from towns, and departments,
and, above all, from the marshals, generals, and regiments who happened
to be near the capital.

This while, however, the partisans of Napoleon in Paris were far more
active than the royalists. They gave out everywhere that, as the
proclamation from the Gulf of Juan had stated, Buonaparte was come back
thoroughly cured of that ambition which had armed Europe against his
throne; that he considered his act of abdication void, because the
Bourbons had not accepted the crown on the terms on which it was
offered, and had used their authority in a spirit, and for purposes, at
variance with the feelings and the interests of the French people; that
he was come to be no longer the dictator of a military despotism, but
the first citizen of a nation which he had resolved to make the freest
of the free; that the royal government wished to extinguish by degrees
all memory of the revolution--that he was returning to consecrate once
more the principles of liberty and equality, ever hateful in the eyes of
the old nobility of France, and to secure the proprietors of forfeited
estates against all the machinations of that dominant faction; in a
word, that he was fully sensible to the extent of his past errors, both
of domestic administration and of military ambition, and desirous of
nothing but the opportunity of devoting, to the true welfare of peaceful
France, those unrivalled talents and energies which he had been rash
enough to abuse in former days. With these suggestions they mingled
statements perhaps still more audacious. According to them, Napoleon had
landed with the hearty approbation of the Austrian court, and would be
instantly rejoined by the Empress and his son. The Czar also was
friendly; even England had been sounded ere the adventure began, and
showed no disposition to hazard another war for the sake of the
Bourbons. The King of Prussia, indeed, remained hostile--but France was
not sunk so low as to dread that state single-handed. It was no secret,
ere this time, that some disputes of considerable importance had sprung
up among the great powers whose representatives were assembled at
Vienna; and such was the rash credulity of the