h pleased himself,
and which was forthwith published under the title of "Act Additional to
the Constitutions of the Empire."

This title gave great offence, because it seemed to recognise many
anterior enactments, wholly irreconcilable with the tenor of the
document itself; and the mode of its promulgation furnished even more
serious ground of objection. This constitution was, on the face of it,
not a compact between the prince and the people, but the record of boons
conceded by the former to the latter. In a word, all they that had
condemned Louis XVIII. for his royal _charter_, were compelled to
acknowledge that their own imperial champion of freedom was beginning
his new career by a precisely similar display of presumption.

The substance of the "additional act" disappointed all those who
hankered after the formal exposition of first principles; but it must be
allowed that its provisions seem to include whatever is needful for the
arrangement of a free representative constitution; hereditary monarchy;
a hereditary peerage; a house of representatives, chosen by the people,
at least once within every five years; yearly taxes, levied only by the
whole legislature; responsible ministers; irremovable judges; and, in
all criminal cases whatever, the trial by jury. The act, however, was
published; the electoral colleges accepted of it, as they had done of
all its predecessors; and it by degrees came out that the business of
the _Champ-de-Mai_ was to be--not even the discussion of the imperial
scheme, but only to swear submission to its regulations, and witness a
solemn distribution of eagles to those haughty bands who acknowledge no
law but that of the sword.

This promised assemblage was preceded by one of the rabble of Paris,
convoked in front of the Tuileries on the 17th of May, and there feasted
and harangued by Napoleon--a condescension which excited lively
displeasure among his soldiery. He himself looked and spoke as one
thoroughly ashamed of what he had done and was doing. It had been his
desire to stimulate among these people something of the old zeal of the
revolutionary period, in case Paris should be once more threatened by a
foreign enemy; but he had the double mortification to find that the army
considered their touch as contamination, and that among themselves the
name of Louis was almost as popular as his own. Even the _Dames des
halles_, so conspicuous in the revolutionary tumults, screamed royalist
ditt