hese ladies
only been waiting for me in order to feel their heart palpitate? I seek
mind and entertainment, but I fly from all those who display a desire to
exercise a control over my heart; in this I see nothing but self-love,
and I hold myself aloof from such contact."

While the royalists and the ladies of the Faubourg St. Germain were
lavishing attentions upon the allies, and assuring the returned king of
the boundless delight of his people, this people was already beginning
to grumble. The allies had now completed their task, they had restored
to France its legitimate king, and they now put the finishing-touch to
their work by providing in the treaty, that France should be narrowed
down to the boundaries it had had before the revolution.

France was compelled to conform to the will of its vanquishers. From the
weakness of the legitimists they now snatched that which they had been
compelled to accord to the strength of the empire.

All of those fortified places, that had been bought with so much French
blood, and that were still held by Frenchmen, were to be given up, and
the great, extended France was to shrink back into the France it had
been thirty years before! It was this that made the people murmur. The
Frenchmen who had left Napoleon because they had grown weary of endless
wars, were, nevertheless, proud of the conquests they had made under
their emperor. The surrender of these conquests wounded the national
pride, and they were angry with their king for being so ready to put
this shame upon France--for holding the crown of France in higher
estimation than the honor of France!

It must be conceded, however, that Louis XVIII. had most bitterly felt
the disgrace that attached to him in this re-establishment of France
within its ancient boundaries, and he had endeavored to protest in every
way against this demand of the allies. But his representative had been
made to understand that if Louis XVIII. could not content himself with
the France the allies were prepared to give him, he was at liberty to
relinquish it to Marie Louise. The king was, therefore, compelled to
yield to necessity; but he did so with bitter mortification, and while
his courtiers were giving free rein to their enthusiasm for the allies,
he was heard to whisper, "_Nos chers amis les ennemis_[33]!"

[Footnote 33: "Our dear friends the enemies!"]

Thus embittered against the allies, it was only with great reluctance,
and after a long and bi