Now, God, in His inscrutable purposes, had designed his fall and had deserted him.
People not merely ceased to believe in him, but they ceased to hope.
Those who had anything to fear or to expect from a political movement, all those skin-changing serpents that live on different Governments as they come and go, already began to lay their plans—some to lessen their fears, others to augment their expectations. They began to feel, moreover, that Napoleon was not France; but that they had, so to speak, taken the heroic tenant on a lease, and the lease was up—France was prepared to bear the damages, but not to renew the lease.
You could still hear people saying: "Napoleon has beaten the enemy at Brienne; the Prussians are retreating to Bar"—but at the same time they said: "The Russians are marching on Troyes." We certainly read in the Moniteur that we had beaten them at Rosnay and on the road to Vitry; but at the same time that this bulletin was published appeared the first Royalist manifesto. We were routing the Allies at Champaubert and at Montmirail, but the duc d'Angoulême was issuing a proclamation dated from Saint Jean-de-Luz.
At each victory, Napoleon was using up his men, and losing ten leagues of ground. Wherever he fought personally, the enemy was beaten, but he could not be in every place at once.
Every moment was bringing the roar of cannons nearer to us, though we had not actually heard them yet.
There had been fighting at Château-Thierry; and at Nogent; and Laon was occupied.
Everyone began hiding his valuables, burying what he considered most precious.
We had a cellar which was reached through a trap-door; my mother filled it with linen, furniture, mattresses, she had the trap-door taken away and the whole room re-floored; so no treasure-seekers could see the exact spot to fasten upon.
Then she put thirty old louis in a box, she put this box in a small leather bag, she drove a stake in the garden and in the hole made by the stake she slipped the box.