CHAPTER VI
THE WATERLOO YEAR
Lord Sheffield's forebodings—Talleyrand and the Senate—Vagabond Royalty—Mr. North and Napoleon—The rout of the Bourbon Government.
1814-1816.
THE two years which intervened between Edward Stanley's second and third visits to France saw the Empire regained and lost by Napoleon, and the French Crown lost and regained by Louis XVIII.
In spite of the rose-coloured description of the comforts and pleasures of his journey with which the correspondence of 1814 closes, neither the Rector nor his brother found it possible to travel on the Continent in 1815, which Lady Maria had foretold would be "a much more favourable time."
Such hopes must soon have been dashed by the proceedings of the Congress of Vienna, which, as was said, "danse mais n'avance pas," and gloomy forebodings are shewn in two letters from Lord[236] Sheffield to his son-in-law, which were received at Alderley in the autumn of 1814 and the spring of 1815.
The first gives Lord Sheffield's view of the situation, and the second describes Napoleon's own remarks upon it to Lord Sheffield's nephew, Mr. Frederick Douglas.
Lord Sheffield to Sir John Stanley.
Sheffield Place, October 30, 1814.