I also remarked a great moral perplexity, the uneasiness of
opposing sentiments, an ardent longing for peace, a deadly hatred of
foreign invaders, with alternating feelings, as regarded Napoleon, of
anger and sympathy. By some he was denounced as the author of all their
calamities; by others he was hailed as the bulwark of the country, and
the avenger of her injuries. What struck me as a serious evil, although
I was then far from being able to estimate its full extent, was the
marked inequality of these different expressions amongst the divided
classes of the population. With the affluent and educated, the prominent
feeling was evidently a strong desire for peace, a dislike of the
exigencies and hazards of the Imperial despotism, a calculated
foreshadowing of its fall, and the dawning perspective of another system
of government. The lower orders, on the contrary, only roused themselves
up from lassitude to give way to a momentary burst of patriotic rage, or
to their reminiscences of the Revolution. The Imperial rule had given
them discipline without reform. Appearances were tranquil, but in truth
it might be said of the popular masses as of the emigrants, that they
had forgotten nothing, and learned nothing. There was no moral unity
throughout the land, no common thought or passion, notwithstanding the
common misfortunes and experience. The nation was almost as blindly and
completely divided in its apathy, as it had lately been in its
excitement. I recognized these unwholesome symptoms; but I was young,
and much more disposed to dwell on the hopes than on the perils of the
future. While at Nismes, I soon became acquainted with the events that
had taken place in Paris. M. Royer-Collard wrote to press my return. I
set out on the instant, and a few days after my arrival, I was appointed
Secretary-General to the Ministry of the Interior, which department the
King had just confided to the Abbe de Montesquiou.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: I have inserted, amongst the "Historic Documents" at the
end of the Volume, three of the letters which M. de Chateaubriand
addressed to me, at the time, on this subject. (Historic Documents, No.
I.)]

[Footnote 2: Amongst the "Historic Documents" at the end of this volume,
I have included a letter, addressed to me from Brussels, by the
Count de Lally-Tolendal, on the 'Annals of Education,' in which the
character of the writer and of the time are exhibited with agreeable
frankness. (Hist. Doc