h he reached
in safety. There had been a plan organised by Generals Lallemand and
Lefevre for seizing the roads between Paris and Belgium, and
intercepting the flight of the King; but Marshal Mortier had been
successful in detecting and suppressing this movement.

On the evening of the 20th of March, Napoleon once more entered Paris.
He came preceded and followed by the soldiery, on whom alone he had
relied, and who, by whatever sacrifices, had justified his confidence.
The streets were silent as the travel-worn cavalcade passed along; but
all that loved the name or the cause of Napoleon were ready to receive
him in the Tuileries; and he was almost stifled by the pressure of those
enthusiastic adherents, who the moment he stopped, mounted him on their
shoulders, and carried him so in triumph up the great staircase of the
palace. He found, in the apartments which the King had just vacated, a
brilliant assemblage of those who had in former times filled the most
prominent places in his own councils and court: among the rest was
Fouche. This personage was not the only one present who had recently
intrigued with the Bourbons against Buonaparte--with as much apparent
ardour, and perhaps with about as much honesty, as in other times he had
ever brought to the service of the Emperor. "Gentlemen," said Napoleon,
as he walked round the circle, "it is disinterested people who have
brought me back to my capital. It is the subalterns and the soldiers
that have done it all. I owe everything to the people and the army."

[Footnote 69: The allusion is to Marmont's conduct at Essonne, and
Augereau's hasty abandonment of Lyons when the Austrians approached it
in March, 1814.]

[Footnote 70: Napoleon took the idea and name of this assembly from the
history of the early Gauls.]

CHAPTER XXXIX

The Hundred Days--Declaration of the Congress at Vienna--Napoleon
prepares for War--Capitulation of the Duke
d'Angouleme--Insurrection of La Vendee--Murat advances from
Naples--Is Defeated--And takes refuge in France--The
Champ-de-Mai--Dissatisfaction of the Constitutionalists.

The reports so zealously circulated by the Buonapartists, that some at
least of the great European powers were aware, and approved, of the
meditated debarkation at Cannes--and the hopes thus nourished among the
French people, that the new revolution would not disturb the peace of
the world--were very speedily at an end. The instant that