es, re-entered Paris at night, exactly as Louis XVIII. had
quitted that capital, his carriage surrounded by dragoons, and only
encountering on his passage a scanty and moody populace. Enthusiasm had
accompanied him throughout his journey; but at its termination he found
coldness, doubt, widely disseminated mistrust, and cautious reserve;
France divided, and Europe irrevocably hostile.

The upper, and particularly the middle classes, have often been
reproached with their indifference and selfishness. It has been said
that they think only of their personal interests, and are incapable of
public principle and patriotism. I am amongst those who believe that
nations, and the different classes that constitute nations--and, above
all, nations that desire to be free--can only live in security and
credit under a condition of moral perseverance and energy; with feelings
of devotion to their cause, and with the power of opposing courage and
self-sacrifice to danger. But devotion does not exclude sound sense, nor
courage intelligence. It would be too convenient for ambitious
pretenders, to have blind and fearless attachment ever ready at their
command. It is often the case with popular feeling, that the multitude,
army or people, ignorant, unreflecting, and short-sighted, become too
frequently, from generous impulse, the instruments and dupes of
individual selfishness, much more perverse and more indifferent to their
fate than that of which the wealthy and enlightened orders are so
readily accused. Napoleon, perhaps more than any other eminent leader of
his class, has exacted from military and civil devotion the most trying
proofs; and when, on the 21st of June, 1815, his brother Lucien, in the
Chamber of Representatives, reproached France with not having upheld him
with sufficient ardour and constancy, M. de la Fayette exclaimed, with
justice: "By what right is the nation accused of want of devotion and
energy towards the Emperor Napoleon? It has followed him to the burning
sands of Egypt, and the icy deserts of Moscow; in fifty battle-fields,
in disaster as well as in triumph, in the course of ten years, three
millions of Frenchmen have perished in his service. We have done enough
for him!"

Great and small, nobility, citizens, and peasants, rich and poor,
learned and ignorant, generals and private soldiers, the French people
in a mass had, at least, done and suffered enough in Napoleon's cause to
give them the right of refusing