Part 73 (1/2)

Considering, That the liberty of the press, established and consecrated as one of the rights of the nation, has been constantly subjected to the arbitrary censors.h.i.+p of the police, and that at the same time he has made use of the press to fill France and all Europe with contradicted facts, false maxims, doctrines favorable to despotism, and outrages against foreign governments;

That acts and reports rendered by the Senate have been caused to be garbled in publication;

Considering, That, in place of reigning with an eye singly to the interest, the happiness and the glory of the French people and in accordance with the words of his oath, Napoleon has heaped high the woes of the fatherland by his refusal to treat upon conditions which the national interests bade him accept, and which would have compromised neither French honor nor the interests of the nation;

By the abuse he has made of all the resources of men and of money that have been confided to him;

By his abandoning of the wounded without medical attention, without a.s.sistance, and without food;

By various measures, the result of which has been the ruin of cities, the misery and depopulation of the country districts, famine and contagious diseases;

Considering, That, by all these causes, the Imperial Government, established by the Senate-Consulate on the 28th Floreal, year XII, has ceased to exist, and that the manifest will of all the French calls for an order of things whose first result shall be the re-establishment of general peace and which may be also an epoch of solemn reconciliation among all the states of the great European family,

The Senate declares and decrees as follows:

Article 1.--Napoleon Bonaparte is deposed from the throne, and the hereditary right set up in his family is abolished. The French people and the army are released from their oath of fidelity towards Napoleon Bonaparte, who has ceased to be Emperor.

The heart rises with indignation and disgust at the thought of the shamefulness of these miserable senators. Not alone did not one among them dare to protest, even by his silence, against these acts which they now condemned, but these very acts in their time had had no more vociferous upholders than they themselves.

One last test was reserved for France and Napoleon. The latter was furnished later (in 1815) with the opportunity to expiate and redeem the past. His monarchical pride, his hatred for the Revolution both contrived to render impossible this supreme expiation, and a terrible chastis.e.m.e.nt fell upon him. In 1814 Bonaparte, although his throne was forfeit, was recognized sovereign of the island of Elba. The coalized Kings a.s.signed him that place as a residence, and thither, attended by several officers and soldiers faithful to him in his misfortune, he repaired.

So great was the need felt by France for peace, repose, and independence, after these ten years of warfare and hard service, that in spite of her profound aversion for the Bourbons, their return was hailed with joy. The kingdom of 1814, a new usurpation of the sole, indivisible, indefeasable and inalienable sovereignty of the people, consecrated again the iniquitous principle of monarchy, against which the republican minority in vain protested.

Louis XVIII, accordingly, made his solemn entry into Paris on the 3rd of May, 1814, in the midst of the princes of his family, escorted by the greater part of the Marshals of the Empire, among whom mingled Emigrants and foreign generals: legitimate punishment to Napoleon!

The Bourbons deeply wounded the sentiment of the nation by a return to the usages of the Old Regime and by outrages against the acts of the Revolution. Decrees restored to the Emigrants the estates and property that had not yet been sold; the loans contracted by Louis XVIII in various countries were placed among the debts of the state. Ordinances prescribed the observation of church days and Sundays; the censors.h.i.+p was retained almost as rigorous as under the Empire. Processions commenced again to circulate about the churches. Thus the royal government in a short s.p.a.ce became as odious as the imperial government had been. Several military conspiracies were organized. One faction of the bourgeoisie thought of calling to the throne the Duke of Orleans, while the republican party thought, on its part, to turn the trend of events to its own profit. But, as has well been said, the fate of France lay in the hands of the army, attached to Napoleon by the privileges he had showered upon it, and by the memories of its glory. The people, long grown disused to political life, switched off by Napoleon, and wounded by the Bourbons in its revolutionary instincts, lay inert, all save a few old patriots of the ill.u.s.trious days of the Revolution. The army alone, then, was the deciding factor in the fate of the Restoration.

Such was the state of mind in France from the 3rd of May, 1814, the day of Louis XVIII's entry into Paris, up to the beginning of the month of March, 1815, at which period begins our next chapter.

CHAPTER VIII.

RETURN OF NAPOLEON.

It was ten o'clock in the morning of the 20th day of March, of the year 1815. Monsieur Desmarais and his brother-in-law, Monsieur Hubert, were awaiting in a chamber of the Tuileries an audience which they had requested with the Duke of Blacas, minister to Louis XVIII, and his most intimate favorite. They had antic.i.p.ated the hour of the interview, in order to arrive among the first; for great was the throng of solicitants which sought Monsieur Blacas, whose recommendation was all-powerful with the King. Desmarais and Hubert were dressed in the costume of peers of the realm of France. The former, first senator under the Consulate, then under the Empire, had been besides created a Count by Napoleon. Thus, turned royalist, just as he had been Bonapartist (and, to retrace his political career, Thermidorean, Terrorist, Jacobin, and first of all Const.i.tutional), Count Desmarais owed to his recent royalist devotion the fact that he had been included in the list of senators who were made peers of France since the Bourbon return. He was now in his sixty-ninth year; his careworn, bitter features began to show the weakening hand of age. Hubert, on the contrary, seemed lively and brisk as ever. He had become the possessor of an enormous fortune, thanks to his purveyors.h.i.+p under the Directorate, while he was a member of the Council of Ancients.

He had curried no favors at the hand of the Empire, whose absolutism conflicted with his political principles; his ideal government had always been a const.i.tutional King, subordinated to an oligarchy of bourgeois. Hubert had been one of a batch of large proprietors whom Louis XVIII had in one day admitted to the Chamber of Peers; but he had not been long in alienating himself from the government of the Restoration, which was piling fault upon fault; he accordingly attached himself to the Orleanist faction.

While awaiting their audience with Minister Blacas, the two were engaged in a political discussion. Soon there entered Fouche, in tow of an usher. ”You will inform his Excellency that the Duke of Otranto begs an audience with him,” said Fouche to the usher. The usher bowed and disappeared into the ante-room, while the new Duke exclaimed:

”What, is this you, Citizen Brutus Desmarais? And pray, what are you soliciting here? An order for the debut at the Opera of that dancing girl you are protecting?”

”That devil of a Fouche knows everything! You would think he was still Minister of Police,” interjected Hubert.

”The cask will always smell of the herring, my dear. I saw this morning two of my old agents, who continue to make me their little confidences.”

”Prefect of police, chief of spies! A pretty function, and highly honorable!” sneered Hubert.

”Take care, take care, Citizen Hubert,” cautioned Fouche. ”I have my eye on the Orleanist conspiracy, in which you have taken it upon yourself to play a role!”