Thus I spoke: one is never entitled to say that all is lost so long as one has attempted nothing. What could have been finer than an old son of St. Louis overthrowing, with Frenchmen, in a few moments, a man whom all the confederate kings of Europe had taken so many years to lay low?
This resolution, desperate in appearance, was very reasonable at bottom and offered not the smallest danger. I shall always remain convinced that, had Bonaparte found Paris hostile and the King present, he would not have tried to force them. Without artillery, provisions, or money, he had with him only troops collected at random, still wavering, astonished at their sudden change of cockade, at their oaths taken headlong on the roads: they would promptly have become divided. A few hours' delay and Napoleon was lost; it but needed a little heart. Already, even, we could rely on a portion of the army; the two Swiss regiments were keeping their faith: did not Marshal Gouvion Saint-Cyr make the Orleans garrison resume the white cockade two days after Bonaparte's entry into Paris? From Marseilles to Bordeaux, all recognised the King's authority during the whole month of March: at Bordeaux, the troops were hesitating; they would have remained with Madame la Duchesse d'Angoulême, if the news had come that the King was at the Tuileries and that Paris was being defended. The provincial towns would have imitated Paris. The loth Regiment of the line fought very well under the Duc d'Angoulême; Masséna was proving himself crafty and uncertain; at Lille, the garrison responded to Marshal Mortier's stirring proclamation. If all those proofs of a possible fidelity took place in spite of a flight, what would they not have been in the case of a resistance?
Had my plan been adopted, the foreigners would not have ravaged France afresh; our Princes would not have returned with the hostile armies; the Legitimacy would have been saved through itself. One thing alone would have to be feared after success: the too great confidence of the Royalty in its strength, and, consequently, attempts upon the rights of the nation.
Why did I arrive at a period in which I was so ill-placed? Why have I been a Royalist against my instinct, at a time when a miserable race of courtiers was unable either to hear or to understand me? Why was I flung into that troop of mediocrities, who took me for a raver when I spoke of courage, for a revolutionary when I spoke of liberty?
A fine question of defense, indeed! The King had no fear, and my plan rather pleased him through a certain "Louis-Quatorzian" grandeur; but other faces had lengthened. They packed up the Crown diamonds (formerly purchased out of the privy-purse of the Sovereigns), leaving thirty-three million crowns in the treasury and forty-two millions in securities. Those sixty-five millions were the produce of taxation: why was it not returned to the people, rather than left to tyranny!
A dual procession passed up and down the stair-cases of the Pavillon de Flore; people were asking what they were to do: no answer. They applied to the captain of the guards; they questioned the chaplains, the precentors, the almoners: nothing. Vain talk, vain retailing of news. I saw young men weep with rage when uselessly asking for orders and arms; I saw women faint with anger and contempt. Access to the King was impossible; etiquette closed the door.
A Royal order: "Hunt him down."
The great measure decreed against Bonaparte was an order to "hunt him down[252]:" Louis XVIII., with no legs, "hunting down" the conqueror who bestrode the earth! This form of the ancient laws, renewed for the occasion, is enough to show the compass of mind of the statesmen of that period. "To hunt down" in 1815! "Hunt down!" And "hunt" whom? "Hunt" a wolf? "Hunt" a brigand chieftain? "Hunt" a felon lord? No: "hunt" Napoleon, who had "hunted down" kings, who had seized and branded them for all time on the shoulder with his indelible "N"!
From this order, when considered more closely, sprang a political truth which no one saw: the Legitimate House, estranged from the nation for three-and-twenty years, had remained at the day and place at which the Revolution had caught it, whereas the nation had progressed in point of time and space. Hence the impossibility of understanding and meeting one another; religion, ideas, interests, language, earth and heaven, all were different for the people and for the King, because they were separated by a quarter of a century equivalent to centuries.