The Sword of Honor Part 73

Considering, That the liberty of the press, established and consecrated as one of the rights of the nation, has been constantly subjected to the arbitrary censorship of the police, and that at the same time he has made use of the press to fill France and all Europe with contradicted facts, false maxims, doctrines favorable to despotism, and outrages against foreign governments;

That acts and reports rendered by the Senate have been caused to be garbled in publication;

Considering, That, in place of reigning with an eye singly to the interest, the happiness and the glory of the French people and in accordance with the words of his oath, Napoleon has heaped high the woes of the fatherland by his refusal to treat upon conditions which the national interests bade him accept, and which would have compromised neither French honor nor the interests of the nation;

By the abuse he has made of all the resources of men and of money that have been confided to him;

By his abandoning of the wounded without medical attention, without a.s.sistance, and without food;

By various measures, the result of which has been the ruin of cities, the misery and depopulation of the country districts, famine and contagious diseases;

Considering, That, by all these causes, the Imperial Government, established by the Senate-Consulate on the 28th Floreal, year XII, has ceased to exist, and that the manifest will of all the French calls for an order of things whose first result shall be the re-establishment of general peace and which may be also an epoch of solemn reconciliation among all the states of the great European family,

The Senate declares and decrees as follows:

Article 1.--Napoleon Bonaparte is deposed from the throne, and the hereditary right set up in his family is abolished. The French people and the army are released from their oath of fidelity towards Napoleon Bonaparte, who has ceased to be Emperor.

The heart rises with indignation and disgust at the thought of the shamefulness of these miserable senators. Not alone did not one among them dare to protest, even by his silence, against these acts which they now condemned, but these very acts in their time had had no more vociferous upholders than they themselves.

One last test was reserved for France and Napoleon. The latter was furnished later (in 1815) with the opportunity to expiate and redeem the past. His monarchical pride, his hatred for the Revolution both contrived to render impossible this supreme expiation, and a terrible chastis.e.m.e.nt fell upon him. In 1814 Bonaparte, although his throne was forfeit, was recognized sovereign of the island of Elba. The coalized Kings a.s.signed him that place as a residence, and thither, attended by several officers and soldiers faithful to him in his misfortune, he repaired.

So great was the need felt by France for peace, repose, and independence, after these ten years of warfare and hard service, that in spite of her profound aversion for the Bourbons, their return was hailed with joy. The kingdom of 1814, a new usurpation of the sole, indivisible, indefeasable and inalienable sovereignty of the people, consecrated again the iniquitous principle of monarchy, against which the republican minority in vain protested.

Louis XVIII, accordingly, made his solemn entry into Paris on the 3rd of May, 1814, in the midst of the princes of his family, escorted by the greater part of the Marshals of the Empire, among whom mingled Emigrants and foreign generals: legitimate punishment to Napoleon!

The Bourbons deeply wounded the sentiment of the nation by a return to the usages of the Old Regime and by outrages against the acts of the Revolution. Decrees restored to the Emigrants the estates and property that had not yet been sold; the loans contracted by Louis XVIII in various countries were placed among the debts of the state. Ordinances prescribed the observation of church days and Sundays; the censorship was retained almost as rigorous as under the Empire. Processions commenced again to circulate about the churches. Thus the royal government in a short s.p.a.ce became as odious as the imperial government had been. Several military conspiracies were organized. One faction of the bourgeoisie thought of calling to the throne the Duke of Orleans, while the republican party thought, on its part, to turn the trend of events to its own profit. But, as has well been said, the fate of France lay in the hands of the army, attached to Napoleon by the privileges he had showered upon it, and by the memories of its glory. The people, long grown disused to political life, switched off by Napoleon, and wounded by the Bourbons in its revolutionary instincts, lay inert, all save a few old patriots of the ill.u.s.trious days of the Revolution. The army alone, then, was the deciding factor in the fate of the Restoration.

Such was the state of mind in France from the 3rd of May, 1814, the day of Louis XVIII's entry into Paris, up to the beginning of the month of March, 1815, at which period begins our next chapter.

CHAPTER VIII.

RETURN OF NAPOLEON.

It was ten o'clock in the morning of the 20th day of March, of the year 1815. Monsieur Desmarais and his brother-in-law, Monsieur Hubert, were awaiting in a chamber of the Tuileries an audience which they had requested with the Duke of Blacas, minister to Louis XVIII, and his most intimate favorite. They had antic.i.p.ated the hour of the interview, in order to arrive among the first; for great was the throng of solicitants which sought Monsieur Blacas, whose recommendation was all-powerful with the King. Desmarais and Hubert were dressed in the costume of peers of the realm of France. The former, first senator under the Consulate, then under the Empire, had been besides created a Count by Napoleon. Thus, turned royalist, just as he had been Bonapartist (and, to retrace his political career, Thermidorean, Terrorist, Jacobin, and first of all Const.i.tutional), Count Desmarais owed to his recent royalist devotion the fact that he had been included in the list of senators who were made peers of France since the Bourbon return. He was now in his sixty-ninth year; his careworn, bitter features began to show the weakening hand of age. Hubert, on the contrary, seemed lively and brisk as ever. He had become the possessor of an enormous fortune, thanks to his purveyorship under the Directorate, while he was a member of the Council of Ancients.

He had curried no favors at the hand of the Empire, whose absolutism conflicted with his political principles; his ideal government had always been a const.i.tutional King, subordinated to an oligarchy of bourgeois. Hubert had been one of a batch of large proprietors whom Louis XVIII had in one day admitted to the Chamber of Peers; but he had not been long in alienating himself from the government of the Restoration, which was piling fault upon fault; he accordingly attached himself to the Orleanist faction.

While awaiting their audience with Minister Blacas, the two were engaged in a political discussion. Soon there entered Fouche, in tow of an usher. "You will inform his Excellency that the Duke of Otranto begs an audience with him," said Fouche to the usher. The usher bowed and disappeared into the ante-room, while the new Duke exclaimed:

"What, is this you, Citizen Brutus Desmarais? And pray, what are you soliciting here? An order for the debut at the Opera of that dancing girl you are protecting?"

"That devil of a Fouche knows everything! You would think he was still Minister of Police," interjected Hubert.

"The cask will always smell of the herring, my dear. I saw this morning two of my old agents, who continue to make me their little confidences."

"Prefect of police, chief of spies! A pretty function, and highly honorable!" sneered Hubert.

"Take care, take care, Citizen Hubert," cautioned Fouche. "I have my eye on the Orleanist conspiracy, in which you have taken it upon yourself to play a role!"

"Your spies are robbing you. You are very ill informed," retorted the banker.

"Why try to trifle with me? Everybody conspires under the open heavens these days. These Bourbons are imbeciles, and their Prefect of Police, Monsieur Andre, is a ninny! We play all around their legs."

"How can you dare to hold such language in the very palace of our beloved sovereigns?" protested Count Desmarais.

"Come, now! You and your fellows in the Chamber of Peers are yourselves conspirators and enemies of the Bourbons."

"Your conspiracies are pure will-o'-the-wisps," again retorted Hubert.

"Well, I tell you that you, Hubert, are conspiring for the Duke of Orleans. Several officers and generals are conspiring in favor of Bonaparte. A number of colonels in command of regiments are connected with this second plot; while, finally, the old Jacobins, and notably your son-in-law John Lebrenn, Citizen Brutus, as well as the painter Martin and their friends, are conspiring for the Republic; that's a third conspiracy."

"All these plots and complots are of your own invention," grumbled Desmarais, feeling very uneasy.

"True!" acquiesced Fouche with a smile. "But if I never follow the conspiracies I invent, I at least always let myself into those which the imbeciles are nursing. I've a foot everywhere: with the republicans, as an ex-Terrorist; among the Bonapartists, as ex-minister of the Emperor; with the Orleanists as an old friend of Philip Equality's; in short, the best proof I can give you of the existence of these complots is, that I have just come to denounce them. Yes," he continued, his smile broadening, while Desmarais and Hubert stared at him in stupefaction, "I have come to denounce them to that blockhead of a Blacas."

"His Excellency will have the honor to receive Monsieur the Duke of Otranto," announced the usher, making a low bow to Fouche.

"Messieurs," beamed Fouche as he moved towards the open door, "a royalist like me comes before everybody."

As the door closed after Fouche, a new group of solicitors entered the waiting room. These newcomers were the Count of Plouernel, now in spite of his missing eye lieutenant-general and second in command of the company of Black Musketeers of the military household of Louis XVIII; the Count's son, Viscount Gonthram, a boy of thirteen, in the costume of King's page; and, lastly, Cardinal Plouernel, the Count's younger brother. The prelate was garbed in a red cloak and cap. For a moment these new personages stood apart, then the Count of Plouernel advanced towards Monsieur Hubert, whom he did not at first recognize, and engaged him in the following conversation:

"Will you have the goodness, sir, to inform me whether the audiences have commenced?"

"Yes, monsieur; just now the Duke of Otranto was called in by Monsieur the Duke of Blacas. But, pardon me," he added, as little by little he recalled the other's features, "is it not Monsieur the Count of Plouernel whom I have the honor to address?"

"Yes, monsieur," replied the latter.

"Monsieur, do you not recognize me?" continued Hubert. "I will a.s.sist you. We met in 1792, during the trial of our unhappy King. We were conspiring then against the Republic--"

"St. Roche Street, at the house of the former beadle of the parish? Now I recall it!"

"Who would have told us then, Monsieur Count, that more than twenty years after that meeting we would encounter each other again in the palace of the brother of that royal martyr?"

"I fear lest that terrible lesson be lost upon royalty."

"Between ourselves, and without reproach, you have been somewhat the cause of these unhappinesses, you gentlemen of the n.o.bility."

"In conspiring against the republican Const.i.tution we but defended our property and our honor. The Republic despoiled us of our seigniorial rights, sacred and consecrated rights which we held of G.o.d and of our sword."

"Ah, the eternal strife between the Franks and the Gauls! Why is not my nephew Lebrenn here to reply to you!"

"What say you, sir?" asked Plouernel, shuddering at the name. "That Lebrenn, that ironsmith, has he become your nephew? What strange news!"

"He married my niece, the daughter of advocate Desmarais, to-day Count and peer of France."

Under the weight of the memories evoked by the name of Lebrenn, the Count fell silent. The Cardinal drew close to the speakers, holding by the hand his nephew Gonthram. His Eminence, better served by his memory than his brother the Count, recognized Hubert at once, and addressed him in the most courteous tones: