ps. On the
same place where the white flag of the Bourbons had but yesterday
fluttered, the _tricolore_ of the empire now flung out its folds to
the breeze.

In the Tuileries the emperor found all his old ministers, his generals,
and his courtiers, assembled. All were desirous of seeing and greeting
him. An immense concourse of people surged around the entrance on the
stair-ways and in the halls.

Borne aloft on the arms and shoulders of the people, the emperor was
carried up the stairway, and into his apartments; and, while shouts of
joy were resounding within, the thousands without joined the more
fortunate ones who had borne the emperor to his apartments, and rent the
air with exulting cries of "_Vive l'empereur_!"

In his cabinet, to which Napoleon immediately repaired, he was received
by Queen Julia, wife of Joseph Bonaparte, and Queen Hortense, who had
abandoned her place of concealment, and hurried to the Tuileries to
salute the emperor.

Napoleon greeted Hortense coldly, he inquired briefly after the health
of her sons, and then added, almost severely: "You have placed my
nephews in a false position, by permitting them to remain in the midst
of my enemies."

Hortense turned pale, and her eyes filled with tears. The emperor seemed
not to notice it. "You have accepted the friendship of my enemies," said
he, "and have placed yourself under obligations to the Bourbons. I
depend on Eugene; I hope he will soon be here. I wrote to him
from Lyons."

This was the reception Hortense received from the emperor. He was angry
with her for having remained in France, and at the same time the flying
Bourbons, who were on their way to Holland, said of her: "The Duchess of
St. Leu is to blame for all! Her intrigues alone have brought Napoleon
back to Paris."

CHAPTER XII.

THE HUNDRED DAYS.

The hundred days that followed the emperor's return are like a myth of
the olden time, like a poem of Homer, in which heroes destroy worlds
with a blow of the hand, and raise armies out of the ground with a stamp
of the foot; in which nations perish, and new ones are born within the
space of a minute.

These hundred days stand in history as a giant era, and these hundred
days of the restored empire were replete with all the earth can offer of
fortune, of magnificence, of glory, and of victory, as well as of all
that the earth contains that is disgraceful, miserable, traitorous, and
perfidious.

Wondrous and brilliant was t