stricts where his life had
been threatened but a few months before. The commandant of Grenoble was
prepared to resist his further progress, but a heart-stirring appeal
from Napoleon induced a regiment detached to oppose him to join his
standard, and the rest of the garrison was brought over by Colonel
Labedoyere, one of the officers who had conspired to bring him back.
Thence he proceeded to Lyons, issuing decrees, scattering proclamations,
and gathering followers at every stage. He was lavish of promises, not
perhaps wholly insincere, that he would adopt constitutional
government--already established by the charter of Louis XVIII.--and
cease to wage aggressive wars. He relied unduly on the discontent
provoked by the blind partisans of the Bourbons, who, it was said, had
learned nothing and forgotten nothing. This was true, if the spirit of
the restoration were to be measured by the parade of expiatory masses
for the execution of royalists under the revolution, the ostentatious
patronage of priests, the preference of returned _emigres_ to well-tried
servants of the republic and the empire, or the anticipated expulsion of
landowners in possession of "national domains" for the purpose of
dividing them among their old proprietors. All this naturally
exasperated those who had imbibed the principles of the revolution, but
it was more than compensated in the eyes of millions of Frenchmen by the
cessation of conscription and the infinite blessings of peace.

[Pageheading: _"THE HUNDRED DAYS."_]

The king was amongst the least infatuated of the royalists. On hearing
of Napoleon's proclamation, he had the sense to appreciate the danger of
such a bid for sovereignty and the magic of such a name, while his
courtiers regarded Napoleon's enterprise as the last effort of a madman.
He addressed the chamber of deputies in confident and dignified
language; the Duke of Angouleme was employed to rouse the royalist party
at Bordeaux; the Duke of Bourbon was sent into Brittany, the Count of
Artois, with the Duke of Orleans and Marshal Macdonald, visited Lyons,
upon the attitude of which everything, for the moment, seemed to depend.
Most of the marshals remained faithful to the restored monarchy, and Ney
was selected to bar the progress of Napoleon in Burgundy, and has been
credited with a vow that he would bring him back in an iron cage. But it
was all in vain. The Count of Artois was loyally received by the
officials and upper classes at