While on the island the Emperor observed that his new flag had become the first in the Mediterranean. It was held sacred, he said, by the Algerians, who usually made presents to the Elban captains, telling them they were paying the debt of Moscow. Some Algerian ships once anchoring off the island, great alarm was caused among the inhabitants, who questioned the pirates, and asked them plainly whether they came with any hostile views. "Against the Great Napoleon;" they replied, "Oh! never; we do not wage war on God!"
Louis XVIII. had made his public entry into Paris on the 21st of April. He was advanced in years, gross and infirm in person, yet he was, perhaps, less unpopular than the rest of his family; but it was his fatal misfortune to continue to increase day by day the bitterness of those who had never been sincerely his friends. The King had been called to the throne by the French Senate in a decree which provided that he should preserve the political system "which Napoleon had violated," and which declared the legislative constitution as composed of a hereditary sovereign and two houses of assembly; to be fixed and unchangeable. Louis, however, though he proceeded to France on this invitation, did not hesitate to date his first act in the twentieth year of his reign. The Senate saw in such assumptions the traces of those old doctrines of "the divine right of kings," of which Louis was a shining example, and which they, who though not originally of his party, had consented to his recall—although they had through life abhorred and combatted such principles; and they asked themselves, why, if all their privileges were but the gifts of the King, they might not, on any tempting opportunity, be withdrawn by the same authority. They, whose titles had all been won since the death of Louis XVI., were startled when they found, that, according to the royal doctrine, there had been no legitimate government all that time in France!
The first tumult of the Restoration being over, and the troops of the Allies withdrawn, things began to so shape themselves that there were many elements of discontent amongst all classes, one of the most powerful of which was in the army itself. The Allies had restored, without stipulation, the whole of the prisoners who had fallen into their hands during the war. At least 150,000 veteran soldiers, all of whom had fought under Napoleon on many battlefields, were thus poured into France ere Louis was well seated on the throne; men, too, who had witnessed nothing of the last disastrous campaigns; who had sustained themselves in their exile by recounting their earlier victories; and who now, returning fresh and vigorous to their native soil, had but one answer to every tale of misfortune which met them: "These things could never have happened had we been here!"
The Empress Marie was at Blois at the time Napoleon signed his abdication, and Savary has described her grief as very great, but her own reverses were sufficiently severe to account for this, without any strong feeling for Napoleon. By direction of Napoleon she applied for protection to the Emperor of Austria and went to Rambouillet to meet him, where he explained to her that she was to be separated from her husband "for a time." The Emperor Alexander visited her also, very much against her will, and a few days afterwards she departed for Vienna. Alexander also visited Josephine, and found her distress at Napoleon's abdication very great. She appears never to have recovered from the shock for she survived it only about six weeks. She died on the 29th of May, 1814, at Malmaison, and was buried in the church of Ruel. Her funeral was attended by several generals of the allied armies, and marshals and generals of France. The body was afterwards placed in a magnificent tomb of white marble, erected by her two children, and bearing the simple inscription: "Eugene and Hortense to Josephine."
Napoleon's mother, and sister Pauline, as well as a number of ancient and attached servants of his civil government and his army, visited him during the summer of 1814. Not the least of these was Pauline, who made repeated voyages to Italy, and returned again as mysteriously. In the circles of Ferrajo new and busy faces now appeared and disappeared—no one knew whence they had come or whither they went and an air of bustle and mystery pervaded the atmosphere of the place. The Emperor continued to review his handful of veteran soldiers with as much pride as if they had been the innumerable hosts he had led to victory on the Continent, and seemed to be fairly well contented with his situation notwithstanding he had fallen from an eminence that had been reached by no other man in modern times. The only notable change observed in his habits was that he became grave, and reserved, and seemed no longer to take any interest in the improvements he had effected on the island.
It was evident, however, that something was preparing; but the commissioners who watched over Napoleon were unable to fathom it. They repeatedly remarked on the absurdity of the Allied Powers in withholding his pension, which they had solemnly pledged should be paid every quarter, thereby tempting him to release himself; but their reports were left unnoticed by those in whose hands they fell. This obliged the Emperor to sell every luxury and comfort around him to raise the means of paying his current expenses. Then it was that he began to forecast the future and to contemplate a bold stroke, not only for liberty, but to regain his lost throne before he could be transported to St. Helena which he had been informed privately was being discussed at Vienna.
In this he was aided by a nation which was far from satisfied with the man whose possession of the royal sceptre had only been made possible by the force of foreign armies, and it was apparent to nearly everyone that Louis XVIII. could not long rule France tranquilly, even though Napoleon did not return.
Ere autumn closed Napoleon granted furloughs on various pretexts to about two hundred of his Guard, and these at once scattered themselves over France singing his praises. It now began to be whispered that the Exile would return to the soil of France in the spring of the coming year. Among the soldiery and elsewhere he was toasted under the sobriquet of "Corporal Violet," a flower or a ribbon of its color being the symbol of rebellion, and worn openly in the sight of the unsuspecting Bourbons. It was by this secret symbol that Napoleon's friends knew each other. Rings of a violet color with the device, "It will re-appear in the spring," became fashionable; women wore violet-colored silks and the men displayed watch-strings of the same color; while the mutual question when these friends met was generally, "Are you fond of the violet?" to which the answer of a confederate was, "Ah! well."
The representatives of all the European princes had met in Vienna to settle finally a number of questions left undecided at the termination of the war, including a division of the "spoils." Talleyrand was there for France, Wellington for England, Metternich for Austria. On the 11th of March these representatives, who were then discussing among other things "how to get rid of the Man of Elba," were thrown into a panic by the news that Napoleon Bonaparte had reared his standard once more in France and was marching on Paris!