um. He ought to have
received 2,000,000 francs a year from Louis XVIII.; but that monarch,
while confiscating the property of the Bonapartes in France, paid not
a centime of the sums which the allies had pledged him to pay to the
fallen House. Both the Czar and our envoy, Castlereagh, warmly
reproached Talleyrand with his master's shabby conduct; to which the
plenipotentiary replied that it was dangerous to furnish Napoleon with
money as long as Italy was in so disturbed a state. Castlereagh, on
his return to England by way of Paris, again pressed the matter on
Louis XVIII., who promised to take the matter in hand. But he was soon
quit of it: for, as he wrote to Talleyrand on March 7th, Bonaparte's
landing in France _spared him the trouble_.[461]

To assert, however, that Napoleon's escape from Elba was prompted by a
desire to avoid bankruptcy, is to credit him with respectable
_bourgeois_ scruples by which he was never troubled. Though "Madame
Mere" and Pauline complained bitterly to Campbell of the lack of funds
at Elba, the Emperor himself was far from depressed. "His spirits seem
of late," wrote Campbell on December 28th, "rather to rise, and not to
yield in the smallest degree to the pressure of pecuniary
difficulties." Both Campbell and Lord John Russell, who then paid the
Emperor a flying visit, thought that he was planning some great move,
and warned our Ministers.[462] But they shared the view of other
wiseacres, that Italy would be his goal, and that too, when Campbell's
despatches teemed with remarks made to him by Napoleon as to the
certainty of an outbreak in France. Here are two of them:

He said that there would be a violent outbreak, similar to the
Revolution, in consequence of their present humiliation: every man
in France considers the Rhine to be the natural frontier of
France, and nothing can alter this opinion. If the spirit of the
nation is roused into action nothing can oppose it. It is like a
torrent.... The present Government of France is too feeble: the
Bourbons should make war as soon as possible so as to establish
themselves upon the throne. It would not be difficult to recover
Belgium. It is only for the British troops there that the French
army has the smallest awe" (_sic_).

His final resolve to put everything to the hazard was formed about
February 13th, when, shortly after receiving tidings as to the unrest
in Italy, the discords of the Powers,