do not believe in the necessity which they urged upon the King. Fouche
had no control over Paris; the army had retired; the Federates were more
noisy than powerful; the Chamber of Representatives consoled themselves,
by discussing a constitution, for not having dared or known how to form
a government; no party was either able or disposed to arrest effectually
the tide which carried the King along. A little less eagerness, and a
little more determination, would have spared him a sad dishonour. By
waiting a few days he would have incurred the risk, not of fatal
resolutions or violence, but merely of the temporary continuance of
disorder and alarm. Necessity presses upon people as well as on kings:
that with which Fouche armed himself to become minister to Louis XVIII.
was factitious and ephemeral; that which brought Louis XVIII. back to
the Tuileries was real, and became hourly more urgent. There was no
occasion for him to receive the Duke of Otranto into his cabinet at
Arnouville; he might have remained there patiently, for they would soon
have sought him. I thought thus at the time, after having passed two
days in Paris, where I arrived on the 3rd of July, when the manoeuvres
of Fouche were following their course. All that I subsequently saw and
heard tended to confirm me in this opinion.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 9: I owe it to myself to repeat here the retractation of an
error (I am not disposed to use any other word) entertained in regard to
my connection with the Hundred Days, and the part I took at that period.
This retractation, which appeared thirteen years ago in the 'Moniteur
Universel' of the 4th of February, 1844, is couched in the following
terms:--"Several journals have recently said or implied that M. Guizot,
the present Minister of Foreign Affairs, who was Secretary-General to
the Ministry of the Interior in 1814 and 1815, had retained his office
during the Hundred Days, under General Count Carnot, appointed Minister
of the Interior by the Imperial decree of the 20th of March, 1815; that
he had signed the Additional Act, and that he had been subsequently
dismissed. One of these journals has invoked the testimony of the
'Moniteur.' These assertions are utterly false. M. Guizot, now Minister
of Foreign Affairs, had, on the 20th of March, 1815, quitted the
department of the Interior; and by an Imperial decree of the 23rd of the
same month, his office of Secretary-General was conferred upon Baron
Basset de Cha