ore the semblance of some enormous
masquerade. Circassian noblemen in complete mail, and wild Bashkirs with
bows and arrows, were there. All ages, as well as countries, seemed to
have sent their representatives to stalk as victors amidst the nation
which but yesterday had claimed glory above the dreams of antiquity,
and the undisputed mastery of the European world.

The council at the hotel of Talleyrand did not protract its sitting.
Alexander and Frederick William, urged by all their assessors to
re-establish the House of Bourbon, still hesitated. "It is but a few
days ago," said the Czar, "since a column of 5 or 6000 new troops
suffered themselves to be cut in pieces before my eyes, when a single
cry of _Vive le Roi_ would have saved them." De Pradt answered, "Such
things will go as long as you continue to treat with Buonaparte--even
although at this moment he has a halter round his neck." The Czar did
not understand this last illusion; it was explained to him that the
Parisians were busy in pulling down Napoleon's statue from the top of
the great pillar in the Place Vendome. Talleyrand now suggested that the
Conservative Senate should be convoked, and required to nominate a
provisional government, the members of which should have power to
arrange a constitution. And to this the sovereigns assented. Alexander
signed forthwith a proclamation asserting the resolution of the Allies
to "treat no more with Napoleon Buonaparte, or any of his family."
Talleyrand had a printer in waiting, and the document was immediately
published, with this significant _affix_, "Michaud, Printer to the
King." If any doubt could have remained after this, it must be supposed
to have ceased at nine the same evening, when the royalist gentry once
more assembled, sent a second deputation to Alexander, and were (the
Czar himself having retired to rest) received, and answered in these
words, by his minister Nesselrode:--"I have just left the Emperor, and
it is in his name that I speak. Return to your assembly, and announce to
all the French, that, touched with the cries he has heard this morning,
and the wishes since so earnestly expressed to him, his Majesty is about
to restore the crown to him to whom alone it belongs. Louis XVIII. will
immediately ascend his throne."

And yet it is by no means clear that even at the time when this
apparently most solemn declaration was uttered, the resolution of the
Allies had been unalterably taken. Nesselrode