. Maret again became Secretary of State; Decres took the
Navy; Gaudin the finances; Mollien was coaxed back to the Treasury,
and Davoust reluctantly accepted the Ministry of War. Savary declined
to be burdened with the Police, and Napoleon did not press him: for
that clever intriguer, Fouche, was pointed out as the only man who
could rally the Jacobins around the imperial throne: to him, then,
Napoleon assigned this important post, though fully aware that in his
hands it was a two-edged tool. Carnot was finally persuaded to become
Minister for Home Affairs.

Napoleon's fate, however, was to be decided, not at Paris, but by the
statesmen assembled at Vienna. There time was hanging somewhat
heavily, and the news of Napoleon's escape was welcomed at first as a
grateful diversion. Talleyrand asserted that Napoleon would aim at
Italy, but Metternich at once remarked: "He will make straight for
Paris." When this prophecy proved to be alarmingly true, a drastic
method was adopted to save the Bourbons. The plenipotentiaries drew up
a declaration that Bonaparte, having broken the compact which
established him at Elba--the only legal title attaching to his
existence--had placed himself outside the bounds of civil and social
relations, and, as an enemy and disturber of the peace of the world,
was consigned to "public prosecution" (March 13th).[468] The rigour of
this decree has been generally condemned. But, after all, it did not
exceed in harshness Napoleon's own act of proscription against Stein;
it was a desperate attempt to stop the flight of the imperial eagle to
Paris and to save France from war with Europe.

Public considerations were doubtless commingled with the promptings of
personal hatred. We are assured that Talleyrand was the author of this
declaration, which had the complete approval of the Czar. But Napoleon
had one enemy more powerful than Alexander, more insidious than
Talleyrand, and that was--his own past. Everywhere the spectre of war
rose up before the imagination of men. The merchant pictured his ships
swept off by privateers: the peasant saw his homestead desolate: the
housewife dreamt of her larder emptied by taxes, and sons carried off
for the war. At Berlin, wrote Jackson, all was agitation, and
everybody said that _the work of last year would have to be done over
again_.

In England the current of public feeling was somewhat weakened by the
drifts and eddies of party politics. Many of the Whigs made