"I am nearer to Vienna than the Emperor of Austria is to Paris!"
Russia, Austria, Prussia and England, for their mutual consolation, concluded a new treaty of alliance at Chaumont[102]; but in reality they were alarmed at Bonaparte's resistance and were thinking of retreat. At Lyons an army[103] was forming on the Austrian flank; Marshal Soult was checking the English; the Congress of Châtillon[104], which was not dissolved until the 18th of March, was still negociating. Bonaparte drove Blücher[105] from the heights of Craonne[106]. The main allied army had triumphed on the 26th of February, at Bar-sur-Aube, thanks only to superiority in numbers. Bonaparte, multiplying himself, had recovered Troyes[107], which the Allies reoccupied[108]. From Craonne he had moved upon Rheims[109].
"To-night," he said, "I shall go to take my father-in-law at Troyes."
On the 20th of March, an affair took place near Arcis-sur-Aube[110]. Amid a rolling fire of artillery, a shell having fallen in front of a square of the guards, the square appeared to make a slight movement: Bonaparte dashed towards the projectile, the fuse of which was smoking, and made his horse sniff at it; the shell burst, and the Emperor came safe and sound from the midst of the shattered bolt.
The battle was to recommence the following day, but Bonaparte, yielding to the inspiration of genius, an inspiration which was none the less fatal, retired in order to bear upon the rear of the confederate troops, separate them from their stores, and swell his own army with the garrisons of the frontier places. The foreigners were preparing to fall back upon the Rhine, when Alexander, by one of these Heaven-inspired impulses which change a whole world, took the resolve to march upon Paris, the road to which was becoming free[111]. Napoleon thought he would draw the mass of the enemy after him, and he was followed, by only ten thousand men of the cavalry, whom he believed to be the advance-guard of the main troops, whereas they masked the real movement of the Prussians and Muscovites. He dispersed those ten thousand horse at Saint-Dizier and Vitry, and then perceived that the great allied army was not behind them: that army, which was flinging itself upon the capital, had before it only Marshals Marmont[112] and Mortier[113], with about twelve thousand conscripts.
He retires to Fontainebleau.
Napoleon hurriedly made for Fontainebleau[114]: there a sainted victim[115], retiring, had left the requiter and the avenger. Two things in history always go side by side: let a man enter upon a path of injustice, and he at the same time opens for himself a path of perdition in which, at a given distance, the first road will converge into the second.
*
Men's minds were greatly agitated: the hope of at all costs seeing brought to a close a cruel war which, since twenty years, had been weighing down upon France sated with misfortune and glory, this hope carried the day, among the masses, over the feeling of nationality. Each one thought of the part he would have to take in the approaching catastrophe. Every evening my friends came to talk at Madame de Chateaubriand's, to tell and comment upon the events of the day. Messieurs de Fontanes, de Clausel, Joubert gathered with the crowd of those transient friends whom events bring and events withdraw. Madame la Duchesse de Lévis, beautiful, peaceable and devoted, whom we shall meet again at Ghent, kept Madame de Chateaubriand faithful company. Madame la Duchesse de Duras was also in Paris, and I often went to see Madame la Marquise de Montcalm[116], sister to the Duc de Richelieu[117].