My mother was not, nor could she be, one of their number. Napoleon had not been so benevolent to us that his return could afford us the slightest pleasure; but we were perfectly well aware, both of us, that we were among the people who were menaced. What could a woman and a child do against these menaces?
We therefore entered our home with heads as bowed as though we were Bonapartists.
And indeed, from that time forth, so we were in the eyes of the inhabitants.
The situation was not exactly cheerful, and our position anything but reassuring.
It was true that not only the Journal des Débats, but all the other papers, spoke of Napoleon as a fugitive bandit driven back into the mountains, tracked by the inhabitants like a wild beast; who had failed in his attempt upon Antibes, and was repulsed by Digne, which had shut its gates against him; who was already repenting having risked such a senseless act as trying to reconquer France with only 1200 men, he who had lost it with 600,000!
All awaited, then, with impatience the papers of the 9th and of the 10th, when, no doubt, we should learn that the usurper had been taken, as the Journal des Débats desired, and, in accordance with the instructions of the Proclamation inserted in the Moniteur, a Court-martial had begun to try him.
Should it so happen, he would have been shot, twenty-four hours later, in a courtyard, a farmyard, a ditch, and all would be at an end.
Why, indeed, should his court-martial take longer than that of the duc d'Enghien?
The paper of the 9th came: but instead of the paragraphs we expected to find, we read that the fugitive had been at Castellane, at Barême, and for a short while at Martigny, where he had issued a proclamation to the inhabitants of Hautes-Alpes.