successfully in his chair against the
materialistic school of the eighteenth century, and watched from the
retirement of his study, with anxiety but not without hope, the chances
of the perilous game on which Napoleon daily staked his empire.

By his lofty and intuitive instincts, Napoleon was a spiritualist: men
of his order have flashes of light and impulses of thought, which open
to them the sphere of the most exalted truths. In his hours of better
reflection, spiritualism, reviving under his reign, and sapping the
materialism of the last century, was sympathetic with and agreeable to
his own nature. But the principle of despotism quickly reminded him that
the soul cannot be elevated without enfranchisement, and the
spiritualistic philosophy of M. Royer-Collard then confused him as much
as the sensual ideology of M. de Tracy. It was, moreover, one of the
peculiarities of Napoleon's mind, that his thoughts constantly reverted
to the forgotten Bourbons, well knowing that he had no other
competitors for the throne of France. At the summit of his power he
more than once gave utterance to this impression, which recurred to him
with increased force when he felt the approach of danger. On this
ground, M. Royer-Collard and his friends, with whose opinions and
connections he was fully acquainted, became to him objects of extreme
suspicion and disquietude. Not that their opposition (as he was also
aware) was either active or influential; events were not produced
through such agencies; but therein lay the best-founded presentiments of
the future; and amongst its members were included the most rational
partisans of the prospective Government.

Hitherto they had ventured nothing beyond vague and half-indulged
conversations, when the Emperor himself advanced their views to a
consistence and publicity which they were far from assuming. On the 19th
of December, 1813, he convened together the Senate and the Legislative
Body, and ordered several documents to be laid before them relative to
his negotiations with the Allied Powers, demanding their opinions on the
subject. If he had then really intended to make peace, or felt seriously
anxious to convince France, that the continuance of the war would not
spring from the obstinacy of his own domineering will, there can be no
doubt that he would have found in these two Bodies, enervated as they
were, a strong and popular support. I often saw and talked
confidentially with three of the fi