t lips of
these celebrated poets and politicians was, as it were, nothing more
than a bulletin concerning the condition of the patient, and concerning
the mortal wounds which he had received. This patient was France; and
the royalists, who were assembled in the house of Count de la Pere, now
felt that the patient's case was hopeless, and that nothing remained to
them but to go into exile, and bemoan his sad fate[47]!

[Footnote 47: Memoires d'une Femme de Qualite, vol. i., p. 99.]

CHAPTER XI

LOUIS XVIII.'S DEPARTURE AND NAPOLEON'S ARRIVAL.

While the royalists were thus considering, hesitating, and despairing,
King Louis XVIII. had alone retained his composure and sense of
security. That is to say, they had taken care not to inform him of the
real state of affairs. On the contrary, he had been informed that
Bonaparte had been everywhere received with coldness and silence, and
that the army would not respond to his appeal, but would remain true to
the king. The exultation with which the people everywhere received the
advancing emperor found, therefore, no echo in the Tuileries, and the
crowd who pressed around the king when he repaired to the hall of the
_Corps Legislatif_ to hold an encouraging address, was not the people,
but the royalists--those otherwise so haughty ladies and gentlemen of
the old nobility, who again, as on the day of the first entrance, acted
the part to which the people were not disposed to adapt themselves, and
transformed themselves for a moment into the people, in order to show to
the king the demonstrations of his people's love.

The king was completely deceived. M. de Blacas told the king of
continuous reverses to Napoleon's arms, while the emperor's advance was
in reality a continuous triumph. They had carried this deception so far
that they had informed the king that Lyons had closed its gates to
Napoleon, and that Ney was advancing to meet him, vowing that he would
bring the emperor back to Paris in an iron cage.

The king was therefore composed, self-possessed, and resolute, when
suddenly his brother, the Count d'Artois, and the Duke of Orleans, who,
according to the king's belief, occupied Lyons as a victor, arrived in
Paris alone, as fugitives, abandoned by their soldiers and servants, and
informed Louis that Lyons had received the emperor with open arms, and
that no resource had been left them but to betake themselves to flight.

And a second, and still more terrible, item o