ase
inglorious ease for themselves at the expense of his honour. _I am the
state_, said he, repeating a favourite expression: _What is the
throne?--a bit of wood gilded and covered with velvet--I am the state--I
alone am here the representative of the people. Even if I had done wrong
you should not have reproached me in public--people wash their dirty
linen at home. France has more need of me than I of France._

Having uttered these furious words, Napoleon repaired to his council of
state, and there denounced the legislative senate, as composed of one
part of traitors and eleven of dupes. _In place of assisting_, said he,
_they impede me. Our attitude alone could have repelled the enemy--they
invite him. We should have presented a front of brass--they lay open
wounds to his view. I will not suffer their report to be printed. They
have not done their duty, but I will do mine--I dissolve the Legislative
Senate_. And the Emperor did accordingly issue his decree, proroguing
indefinitely that assembly, the last feeble shadow of popular
representation in France.

The greatest confusion already began to pervade almost every department
of the public service. The orders of the government were more peremptory
than ever, and they were hourly more neglected. Whole bands of
conscripts, guilty of endeavouring to escape, were tried by military
commissions and decimated. Even close to the barriers of Paris such
executions were constantly going on; and all in vain. The general
feeling was that of sullen indifference. Hireling musicians paraded the
streets, singing fine-new ballads in honour of the Emperor, to the
long-forgotten tune of _ca ira_; the passengers gathered round them, and
drowned the strains in hooting and laughter. In every saloon discussions
such as the police had long suppressed were urged without ceremony.
_This will not continue; the cord is too much stretched--it will soon be
over_; such was the universal language. Talleyrand, hearing an officer
express his alarm and astonishment, made answer in words which have
passed into a proverb:--_It is the beginning of the end._

During this uneasy pause, Napoleon at last dismissed his venerable
prisoner of Fontainebleau. It is not unlikely that, in the altered state
of Italy, he thought the arrival of the Pope might tend to produce some
dissension among his enemies in that quarter; and, in effect, when Pius
reached Rome, he found the capital of the Catholic world in the hand