Listen to his own words:
"When I reached Paris I was exhausted, for I had neither eaten nor slept for three days. I had a bath whilst waiting for the ministers, whom I had summoned. I ought no doubt to have gone direct to the Chambers; but I was worn out with fatigue. Who would have believed they would have taken action so quickly? I reached Paris at seven o'clock; by noon the Chambers were in a state of insurrection."
Then, passing his hand slowly across his face, he added in a hollow voice:
"After all, I am but a man."
Cromwell and Louis XIV. were also but men, sire, and one entered Parliament with his hat on his head, the other with a whip in his hand.
But the one was full of faith, and the other was very young, whilst you, sire, had neither youth nor faith.
"I am growing old," he said to Benjamin Constant: "one is no longer at forty-five what one was at thirty. I ask nothing better than to be enlightened."
Sire, oh! sire, where had the fire of your genius gone that you should ask Benjamin Constant to enlighten you?
He arrived on the 21st, and on the 22nd he abdicated in favour of his son.