said to
Count Mollien, "as they permitted the others to depart."

Four times in less than half a century we have seen kings traverse their
realms as fugitives. Different enemies have described, with evident
pleasure, their helplessness and destitution in flight,--a mean and
senseless gratification, which no one, in the present day, has a right
to indulge. The retreats of Napoleon in 1814 and 1815 were neither more
brilliant nor less bitter than those of Louis XVIII. on the 20th of
March, 1815, of Charles X. in 1830, and of Louis Philippe in 1848. Each
state of greatness endured the same degradation; every party has the
same need of modesty and mutual respect. I myself, as much as any
participator, was impressed, on the 20th of March, 1815, with the
blindness, the hesitation, the imbecility, the misery of every
description, to which that terrible explosion gave birth. It would
afford me no pleasure, and would lead to no advantage, to repeat them.
People are too much inclined at present to conceal their own weaknesses
under a display of the deficiencies of royalty. I prefer recording that
neither royal nor national dignity were wanting at that epoch in noble
representatives. The Duchess d'Angouleme, at Bordeaux, evinced courage
equal to her misfortunes, and M. Laine, as president of the Chamber of
Deputies, protested fearlessly on the 28th of March, in the name of
justice and liberty, against the event at that time fully accomplished,
and which no longer encountered, through the wide extent of France, any
resistance beyond the solitary accents of his voice.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 4: Included in the "Historic Documents," are two letters
addressed to me by the Abbe de Montesquiou in 1815 and 1816, which
furnish an idea of my intimacy with him, and show the natural and
amiable turn of his mind. (Historic Documents, No. IV.)]

[Footnote 5: 'Thoughts upon the Liberty of the Press,' 52 pages, 8vo,
Paris, 1814. Amongst the "Historic Documents" at the end of this volume,
some passages from this pamphlet are inserted, which indicate clearly
its object and character. (Historic Documents, No. V.)]

[Footnote 6: Amongst the "Historic Documents" I include the text of this
decree, and the report to the King which explains its object and
bearing. (Historic Documents, No. VI.)]

[Footnote 7: June 7th, 1814.]

[Footnote 8: September 13th, 1814.]

CHAPTER III.

THE HUNDRED DAYS.

1815.

I IMMEDIATELY LEAVE THE MIN