el, in the name of the sovereign
people, the entire form of government, institutional and dynastic; an
arrogant and chimerical mania which, a year before, had possessed the
Imperial Senate when they recalled Louis XVIII., and which has vitiated
in their source nearly all the political theories of our time.

Napoleon, while incessantly proclaiming the supremacy of the people,
viewed it in a totally different light. "You want to deprive me of my
past," said he, to his physicians; "I desire to preserve it. What
becomes then of my reign of eleven years? I think I have some right to
call it mine; and Europe knows that I have. The new constitution must be
joined to the old one; it will thus acquire the sanction of many years
of glory and success."

He was right: the abdication demanded of him was more humiliating than
that of Fontainebleau; for, in restoring the throne to him, they at the
same time compelled him to deny himself and his immortal history. By
refusing this, he performed an act of rational pride; and in the
preamble as well as in the name of the Additional Act, he upheld the old
Empire, while he consented to modified reforms. When the day of
promulgation arrived, on the 1st of June, at the Champ de Mai, his
fidelity to the Imperial traditions was less impressive and less
dignified. He chose to appear before the people with all the outward
pomp of royalty, surrounded by the princes of his family arrayed in
garments of white taffeta, by the great dignitaries, in orange-coloured
mantles, by his chamberlains and pages:--a childish attachment to
palatial splendour, which accorded ill with the state of public affairs,
and deeply disgusted public feeling, when, in the midst of this
glittering pageant, twenty thousand soldiers were seen to march past and
salute the Emperor, on their road to death.

A few days before, a very different ceremony had revealed another
embarrassing inconsistency in the revived Empire. While discussing with
the Liberal aristocracy his new constitution, Napoleon endeavoured to
win over and subdue, while he flattered, the revolutionary democrats.
The population of the Faubourgs St. Antoine and St. Marceau became
excited, and conceived the idea of forming themselves into a federation,
as their fathers had done, and of demanding from the Emperor leaders and
arms. They obtained their desire; but they were no longer _Federates_,
as in 1792; they were now called _Confederates_, in the hope that, by