"I look askance at myself for not having got myself guillotined for our kings."
Last spark of a fire which had animated the French for so many centuries.
General Lamothe, brother-in-law to M. Laborie, came, despatched by the authorities of the capital, to tell us that it would be impossible for us to appear in Paris without the tricolour cockade. M. de La Fayette and other commissaries, very ill received, for the rest, by the Allies, went fawning from one staff-office to the other, begging from the foreigners for a master of some sort for France: any king, at the Cossack's own option, would do excellently, provided that he did not descend from St. Louis and Louis XIV.
The journey to Paris.
At Roye we held a council: M. de Talleyrand had a pair of hacks put to his carriage and went to the King's. His equipage took up the width of the square, from the minister's inn to the Kings door. He stepped out of his car with a memorandum, which he read to us: he considered the course we should have to follow on our arrival; he ventured a few words on the necessity of admitting all, without distinction, to the distribution of places; he hinted that we might extend our generosity as far as the judges of Louis XVI. His Majesty coloured and, striking the two arms of his chair, with both hands, cried:
"Never!"
A "never" of twenty-four hours!
At Senlis we called at a canon's: his servant-maid received us like dogs; as to the canon, who was not St. Regulus[345], the patron saint of the town, he would not so much as look at us. His maid had orders to show us no other service than to buy us something to eat, for our own money: the Génie du Christianisme availed me nothing. Yet Senlis ought to have been of good omen to us, since it was in that town that Henry IV. escaped from the hands of his gaolers in 1576:
"I have no regret," exclaimed the King who was Montaigne's fellow-countryman, as he made his escape, "save for two things which I have left in Paris: the Mass and my wife."
From Senlis we went to the birth-place of Philip Augustus, otherwise Gonesse. On approaching the village we saw two persons coming towards us: it was Marshal Macdonald and my faithful friend Hyde de Neuville[346]. They stopped our carriage and asked us where M. de Talleyrand was; they made no difficulties about telling me that they were looking for him in order to inform the King that His Majesty must not think of passing the gates before he had taken Fouché as his minister. Anxiety came over me, for, in spite of the manner in which Louis XVIII. had pronounced himself at Roye, I did not feel greatly reassured. I questioned the marshal: