presence of mind in the midst of the public stupor: it is Fouché. With everybody else intelligence is suspended; they are sunk in that stupefaction which follows the most violent blows of fate. Fouché alone thinks for every one, and every thought is a fraud; he alone acts, and every action is a snare. He is caught in his own traps, he laughs at it, and others laugh with him. His letters of connivance with the enemy are intercepted; he is amused at it. Surprised in the act of writing them he allows them to be read audaciously in the tribune; and those whom he betrays in these letters declare themselves satisfied with them. Fascinated, dazzled, stupefied-what shall we say they clap their fettered hands at this triplefaced Judas. . . . Not only are his faculties not paralyzed, they are sharpened, they attain their greatest development; he has found his medium, his national element, in ruin, and he enjoys this agony of a people in its supreme calamity. His dull and faded language becomes coloured. What is Napoleon to him? Un grand homme devenu fou. And the proscription which he is meditating against the friends whose very hands he presses? Un arbre touffu pour les garantir de l'orage.

"See! That man rules everything; fills everything; that sharp, pale face which goes from one to another, behold, what remains now of that glorious France, the mistress of nations and of kings!"

If Fouché possessed the vast power here attributed to him, it was because the solution of the difficulty he had adopted was that which the active and passive majority really approved. Thus Davoust did not scruple to tell a deputation from both Chambers, who arrived when the Baron de Vitrolles, liberated by Fouché, was in close conference with the Commander-in-Chief, that the Duke of Otranto had sent M. de Vitrolles to him for the express

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purpose of negotiating a treaty with the Allies and the Bourbons. Grouchy and Oudinot were at that moment in communication with the agent of the Royalists. The young generals at the head-quarters of Davoust were furious—but what of that? They had no chief. It is true that General Dejean proposed to seize Fouché, and shoot him in the streets-but who was to bell the cat? And when Carnot hinted to Fouché that he too was conspiring for Louis XVIII., "Well," answered Fouché, accuse me, but mind I shall defend myself!" Marshal Davoust, too, said Carnot, has been "perverted." "What, the Marshall also?" answered the grim minister; "but he will be difficult to arrest; go and seize him in his head-quarters." Nor were Oudinot, Grouchy, and Davoust alone: Ney, Soult, and Mortier had arrived at the conclusion that the game of Imperialism was finished, and that further resistance was useless. The chosen men of the Chambers themselves admitted that the qualified recognition of the rights of Napoleon II. had been adopted solely for the purpose of appeasing the army. The army was the true constituency of the Empire, and in its last hours the army alone dreamed of striking in its defence. The Parisians, with some exceptions, were really indifferent to anything except the safety of themselves, their properties, and Paris, and were ready to welcome the stronger side. The shrewd old fellow encounted by an officer of Picton's division, who cried, "Vive le plus fort," and who, ready for every emergency, wore a two-faced cockade," white on one side and tricolor on the other, is an admirable representative of the Parisians of 1815. There was abundance of talk: public activity was reduced to that commodity. The Deputies and Peers talked in their Chambers; the Marshals talked in the Tuileries; the young generals, not yet marshals, talked with more

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vehemence even of shooting Fouché-in their quarters; the people talked in the streets; Napoleon himself talked, when he got any one to listen to him, at La Malmaison. One man alone acted, and acted with a definite purpose and unswerving will, directly and indirectly, openly and secretly, by fair means and foul, and that one man was the Duke of Otranto. And, strangest fact of all, the thing no one even spoke of in those days was the Republic; the Parisians, for the moment, had forgotten the Republic, they had become weary of the Empire; they were almost indifferent to the Restoration.

It is no wonder that Fouché, with his keen activity and unprincipled dexterity, accomplished his definite purpose. The Restoration was advancing, under his management, with giant strides. King Louis, invited by Wellington, had followed the armies across the frontier, had lodged at Le Cateau until Cambrai was taken, then at Cambrai, and subsequently at Roye. A partisan of the Restoration, Wellington held the fixed opinion that permanent peace was not possible with a Bonaparte on the throne of France -that it was possible with Louis XVIII. alone for that any other person, say the Duke of Orleans, if called to the throne, must be considered a usurper, and act as a usurper, and "must endeavour to turn the attention of the country from the defects of his title towards war and foreign conquests." When the Commissioners, sent by the Chambers, met him at Etrées, on the 29th, he frankly explained to them these opinions, and some of them said, "You are in the right." Wellington would not consent even to treat for a suspension of arms, except on condition that the French army retired behind the Loire, and that the National Guards should hold Paris until the King ordered otherwise. These Commissioners had hinted at the surrender of Napoleon, and, as long as he remained in

Paris, the Allies would not stop their operations. But, as we shall see, Napoleon fled to the coast, and that obstacle was removed, even while the Commissioners were waiting upon Wellington in the lines of the British army. Nevertheless, this first serious attempt at negotiation, coincident with the arrival of the Prussians before St. Denis, and the capture of Aubervilliers, failed. It was merely tentative, designed to ascertain the intentions of the King and of the Allies. At that very moment the Deputies were eagerly debating and adopting a new constitution!

§ 6. Before Paris-Capitulation.

The Allied Armies had marched without obstruction and without danger from Waterloo to the gates of Paris. Satisfied with having masked the barrier fortresses, they had turned every position and had compelled the wreck of the great French army to hurry by devious paths into the capital. The moment of danger had now come.

The works, projected by Napoleon, for the defence of Paris, had been partially executed. The Northern side had been covered with entrenchments, and armed with heavy guns. These lines extended from Charenton above, to St. Denis, below Paris. Touching the Seine at each extremity they formed the chord of the very irregular curve traced by the winding course of the river. Vincennes was the strong point on the right, the heights of Belleville and Romanville in the right centre, and from La Villette to St. Denis, the canal of L'Ourcq, or more properly the canal of St. Denis, offered a formidable obstacle. For the interior-bank of this water-way was lofty, and embrasures had been cut at intervals and armed with guns; and while St. Denis formed a strong defensive post on the left, the fortified heights of Montmartre served as

a redoubt in rear of the centre. All the barriers were protected by works, and a tête-de-pont covered the bridge of Charenton. The head-quarters of Davoust were at La Villette. On the left, or southern, bank of the Seine, however, there were no works, except two or three tracings for redoubts at Montrouge. That side of Paris was open. The question was how to reach it? There were, excluding the National Guard, not much to be trusted, and specially directed by its commander Massena to confine itself to the maintenance of order, between 70,000 and 80,000 soldiers in the capital, the greater part on the right bank of the river, the lesser on the left, at Montrouge. It is difficult to form an idea of the force at the disposal of the Allies, but it did not exceed, probably 100,000 men.

The works we have described stopped the progress of the Prussians. A strong reconnaissance along the line of the canal exposed the powerful character of the defences; and the Prussians were forced to contend themselves with the capture of Aubervilliers, the village in front of the canal. On the night of the 29th, they rested in position between the wood of Bondy and Stains, with the reserve at Dammartin and head-quarters at Gonesse. The nearest troops of the Anglo-Allied army were at Senlis. Wellington had ridden in the evening to confer with Blucher on the proposals of the French Commissioners and the future movements of the army; he had found the Prussians in the act of assaulting Aubervilliers, and he saw the formidable nature of the enemy's lines. He formed the opinion that Paris could not be attacked on that side without great loss of life and the risk of defeat. There were then three operations before the Allies-to persevere in the assault of the northern defences; to take up a position and await the coming of Wrede's Bavarians, then at Nancy; to cross the Seine below Paris and force