Louis XVIII., the Count d'Artois and son, with Marshal Marmont and the royal forces left Paris the night before Bonaparte made his entry. As they passed the cities on their retreat, the citizens brought them food, execrating the "Pretorians" who had overturned the institutions and peace of the country. Royalists and Republicans alike participated in this denunciation of the treason of the army.
At Arras the king left the troops and went on by himself to Belgium. The Count d'Artois and Marshal Marmont, the commander of the forces, followed soon afterward, after having issued a proclamation absolving the men from their oath. Thus abandoned, the question arose, what was next to be done. After a desultory discussion, a musketeer declared that the true and safe course was to leave France and take service abroad.
Lamartine opposed this proposition. Though but twenty-four years of age, he had won the respect of his comrades. Stepping on the wheel of a wagon he addressed them. It was his first attempt to speak in public. He referred to the significant fact that his family had been loyal to the monarchy, but had not emigrated during the Revolution. He had been nurtured in such sentiments. Louis XVIII. had now given France a representative government. The cause of Republican Liberty and the cause of the Bourbons had thus become united. If now the two parties should continue to act together, the reign of Bonaparte would be short and his fall complete. But if the royalists should now emigrate, they would, by so doing abandon the Republicans to the army. The blood of the Republicans would smother all resistance to the Empire. The duty, therefore, of those now present, both to their country and to their families, forbade that they should follow the king out of the French territory.
Most of the men voted to remain; a few rode away. Being now without officers, a temporary organization was effected, posts established around Bethune and a patrol provided. Four days later a capitulation took place, by which they were permitted to go to their families, but excluded from Paris.
Lamartine, however, put on the dress of a citizen and went in a cabriolet to Paris. A few days later he was present at a review of the troops.
The Emperor, he observed, exhibited none of that ideal of intellectual beauty and innate royalty, which writers had so often depicted. He seemed to be conscious that the ground was not solid under his feet. His movements indicated distrust and hesitation. As the troops defiled before him they cheered with "a concentrated accent of hopelessness."
Lamartine went home with renewed confidence.
The Imperial conscription filled the Chevalier, his father, with dismay. Lamartine declared to him that he would in no case enter the ranks himself or procure a substitute. He would sooner be shot to death. Leaving home, he put on the dress of a peasant laborer, and eluding the videttes on the frontier, crossed into Switzerland.
For some weeks he was the guest of the Baron de Vincy, an emigrant nobleman whose property had been confiscated. Himself almost without money and his entertainers impoverished, he could not bring himself to burden them longer. Leaving them abruptly, he made his way to Geneva. He was actually considering the project of applying to be a tutor in a Russian family and travelling to the Crimea, Circassia and Persia, when the final overthrow of Bonaparte called him back to France.
He became again a member of the military household of the king. Here he found his oldest and most beloved of friends, the Count Aymon de Virieu. They had been in college together, had travelled in Italy, their fathers had shared danger together in the Royal Guard on the fatal Tenth of August. They were ever after as two brothers, one in thought, one in soul, one in purse. They continued members of the Guard till it was disbanded.