The Emperor, who was engaged in examining a
large chart with a pair of compasses, said, upon seeing him enter:
"Well, Prefect, you also have declared war against me?"--"Sire, my oath
of allegiance made it my duty to do so!"--"A duty you say? and do you
not see that in Dauphiny nobody is of the same mind? Do not imagine,
however, that your plan of the campaign will frighten me much. It only
grieved me to see among my enemies an _Egyptian_, a man who had eaten
along with me the bread of the bivouac, an old friend!"

It is painful to add that to those kind words succeeded these also:
"How, moreover, could you have forgotten, Monsieur Fourier, that I have
made you what you are?"

You will regret with me, Gentlemen, that a timidity, which circumstances
would otherwise easily explain, should have prevented our colleague from
at once emphatically protesting against this confusion, which the
powerful of the earth are constantly endeavouring to establish between
the perishable bounties of which they are the dispensers, and the noble
fruits of thought. Fourier was Prefect and Baron by the favour of the
Emperor; he was one of the glories of France by his own genius!

On the 9th of March, Napoleon, in a moment of anger, ordered Fourier, by
a mandate, dated from Grenoble, _to quit the territory of the seventh
military division within five days, under pain of being arrested and
treated as an enemy of the country!_ On the following day, our colleague
departed from the Conference of Bourgoin, with the appointment of
Prefect of the Rhone and the title of _Count_, for the Emperor after his
return from Elba was again at his old practices.

These unexpected proofs of favour and confidence afforded little
pleasure to our colleague, but he dared not refuse them, although he
perceived very distinctly the immense gravity of the events in which he
was led by the vicissitude of fortune to play a part.

"What do you think of my enterprise?" said the Emperor to him on the day
of his departure from Lyons. "Sire," replied Fourier, "I am of opinion
that you will fail. Let but a fanatic meet you on your way, and all is
at an end."--"Bah!" exclaimed Napoleon, "the Bourbons have nobody on
their side, not even a fanatic. In connection with this circumstance,
you have read in the journals that they have excluded me from the
protection of the law. I shall be more indulgent on my part; I shall
content myself with excluding them from the Tuileries."