“Live the Emperor!” came the answer of six thousand men, as they melted into tears, broke ranks, and crowded around him to fall at his feet, kiss his hands, and touch the hem of his garment.
The officer who had ordered them to fire had a good horse and a fair start; hence he managed to escape.
The six thousand who had come to capture Napoleon turned and marched with him. By this time the country was aroused on all sides, and crowds flocked around the column, shouting “Live the Emperor!” Advancing beyond Vizille, the Emperor was met by Colonel Labédoyère, who had brought his regiment to join Napoleon’s ranks. With cries of joy the troops mingled, and Napoleon took the ardent young colonel in his arms, pressing him to his breast, and saying, “Colonel, it is you who replace me upon the throne!” Onward then to Grenoble, where the gates had been closed, and the defences manned to resist the invader.
It was dark when Napoleon arrived before the walls. He ordered Labédoyère to address the troops within. This was done, and there were cries of “Live the Emperor!” from within the city. But the royal commandant had the keys, and the gates could not be opened. “Room! room!” came the cry from within. It was the shout of citizens of the town coming with beams to batter down the gates.
The work was soon done, the way was open, and the Emperor’s column found itself surrounded by a multitude as enthusiastic as any they had met. With uncontrollable transports they laid hold of Napoleon, pulled him from his horse, and bore him forward in their arms.
That night was one long festival for soldiers, citizens, and peasants; and next morning a great crowd followed him when he set out for Lyons. There, upon an immenser scale, was repeated the ovation of Grenoble. Royal officers lost all control of their troops. Marshal Macdonald and the Count of Artois were utterly abandoned; and when they fled, were followed by a solitary trooper, to whom Napoleon afterward gave the cross of the Legion of Honor. For four days, this great city of southern France testified in every possible way its unbounded joy at the Emperor’s return. It is said that twenty thousand people were constantly under his windows. It is certain that he never forgot these glorious days—almost the last days which he might name glorious. His journey was now no longer an adventure; once more he was a great power among the nations of earth. He had committed no violence, had shed no blood. The love and the admiration of a gallant people were his again—balm for all those wounds of last year. In his address, at his departure, his closing words were simple and touching, “People of Lyons, I love you!” and there can be no doubt that he did.
Moving onward, he came to Auxerre on the 17th; and in the evening came Marshal Ney, with something in word and manner which suggests that he felt what nothing so well describes as the term “sheepish.” Very rude had he been to his Emperor in 1814—rude, brutal, threatening. Now there was a change. Ney was contrite, apologetic, explanatory. He had been misrepresented, it seems; and the newspapers had told lies about him. But Napoleon relieved him with: “Embrace me, my dear Ney. To me you are still the Bravest of the brave.”
Halting briefly at Fontainebleau on March 20, Napoleon spent some solitary hours in the room where he had suffered such agonies the year before; and he went again into the garden which had been his Gethsemane. Pushing on to Paris, he arrived after dark and entered the Tuileries at nine o’clock, borne on the shoulders of his wildly enthusiastic friends. Five thousand young nobles of the royal body-guard had left Paris that morning to head the royal army, and oppose Napoleon’s advance. The troops they expected to command joined their Emperor near Paris; and the noble officers, left without commands, were heard in the Parisian saloons that evening plausibly explaining the cause of their failure to stop the usurper’s progress.
The great city of Paris did not go out to meet the returning Emperor as Grenoble and Lyons had done. Paris was rather indifferent. “They let me come as they let the other fellows go,” remarked Napoleon that night. Thousands of soldiers had cheered him as he entered the capital, adoring friends had pressed him so ardently at the Tuileries that he had cried out, “My friends, you smother me!” Elegant ladies of the imperial court, Hortense in the lead, had made ready to welcome him to the palace; they had thrown arms about his neck and kissed him. But as the wifeless, childless Emperor sat by the fireside late in the night, almost alone, his feet up, resting on the mantelpiece, he looked very tired and very sad. Many old friends had met him; many had stayed away. Paris had not been so warm as Lyons. France was not so unanimous as he had hoped. Confidence in him, and his fortune and final success, was very far indeed from being universal.
Bourrienne records that one of the Paris newspapers made note of the various stages of Napoleon’s return in this wise:—