os,
stewards, butlers, body-servants; they all came one by one or in groups
of twos or threes. As the afternoon wore on these arrivals grew less and
less furtive; the carriages arrived with greater clatter and to-do, with
finer liveries and more gorgeous harness. Those who stepped out of the
carriage doors were no longer quick and stealthy in their movements:
they lingered near the step to give an order or to chat to a friend; the
big cloak no longer concealed the gorgeous uniform below, it was allowed
to fall away from the shoulder, so as to display the row of medals and
stars, the gold embroidery, the magnificence of the Court attire.

The Emperor had left Fontainebleau! Within an hour he would be in Paris!
Everyone knew it, and the excitement in the crowd that watched grew more
and more intense. Last night these same men and women had looked with
mute if superficial sympathy on the departure of Louis XVIII. through
these same palace gates: many eyes then became moist at the sight, as
memory flew back twenty years to the murdered king--his flight to
Varennes, his ignominious return, his weary Calvary from prison to court
house and thence to the scaffold. And here was his brother--come back
after twenty-three years of exile, acclaimed by the populace, cheered by
foreign soldiers--Russians, Austrians, English--anything but French--and
driven forth once more to exile after the brief glory that lasted not
quite a year.

But this the crowd of to-day has already forgotten with the completeness
peculiar to crowds: men, women, and children too, they are no longer
mute, they talk and they chatter; they scream with astonishment and
delight whenever now from more and more carriages, more and more
gorgeously dressed folk descend. The ladies are beginning to arrive: the
wives of the great Court dignitaries, the ladies of the Court and
household of the still-absent Empress: they do not attempt to hide their
brilliant toilettes, their bare shoulders and arms gleam through the
fastenings of their cloaks, and diamonds sparkle in their hair.

The crowd has recognised some of the great marshals, the men who in the
Emperor's wake led the French troops to victory in Italy, in Prussia, in
Austria: Maret Duc de Bassano is there and the crowd cheers him, the Duc
de Rovigo, Marshal Davout, Prince d'Eckmuehl, General Excelmans, one of
Napoleon's oldest companions at arms, the Duke of Gaeta, the Duke of
Padua, a crowd of generals and superior