hiefly confined to his own retinue, and to persons who appeared to
belong to a superior class of society. The lower order of people seemed
to be animated by curiosity and astonishment rather than any other
feeling. I must add that it was not without painful surprise I saw a
squadron of Cossacks close the procession; and my surprise was the
greater when I learned from General Sacken that the Emperor Alexander had
wished that on that day the one Frenchman more should be surrounded
only by Frenchmen, and that to prove that the presence of the Bourbons
was the signal of reconciliation his Majesty had ordered 20,000 of the
Allied troops to quit Paris. I know not to what the presence of the
Cossacks is to be attributed, but it was an awkward circumstance at the
time, and one which malevolence did not fail to seize upon.

Two days only intervened between Monsieur's entrance into Paris and the
arrival of the Emperor of Austria. That monarch was not popular among
the Parisians. The line of conduct he had adopted was almost generally
condemned, for, even among those who lead most ardently wished for the
dethronement of his daughter, through their aversion to the Bonaparte
family, there were many who blamed the Emperor of Austria's behaviour to
Maria Louisa: they would have wished that, for the honour of Francis II.,
he had unsuccessfully opposed the downfall of the dynasty, whose alliance
he considered as a safeguard in 1809. This was the opinion which the
mass of the people instinctively formed, for they judged of the Emperor
of Austria in his character of a father and not in his character of a
monarch; and as the rights of misfortune are always sacred in France,
more interest was felt for Maria Louisa when she was known to be forsaken
than when she was in the height of her splendour. Francis II. had not
seen his daughter since the day when she left Vienna to unite her destiny
with that of the master of half of Europe, and I have already stated how
he received the mission with which Maria Louisa entrusted the Duc de
Cadore.

I was then too intent on what was passing in Paris and at Fontainebleau
to observe with equal interest all the circumstances connected with the
fate of Maria Louisa, but I will present to the reader all the
information I was able to collect respecting that Princess during the
period immediately preceding her departure from France. She constantly
assured the persons about her that she could rely on her father