From high to low, the greater portion of the agents of
government had neither zeal in their cause, nor confidence in their
strength. Napoleon was aware of this, and submitted, as to a necessity
of the moment, to the unlicensed freedom of his opponents, maintaining,
without doubt, in his own heart, the opinion he had declared aloud on a
previous occasion,--"I shall have them all with me if I prove the
strongest."

I question whether he appreciated justly, and at its true value, one of
the causes, a hidden but powerful one, of the feebleness that
immediately succeeded his great success. Notwithstanding the
widely-spread discontent, uneasiness, mistrust, and anger that the
Government of the Restoration had excited, a universal feeling soon
sprang up, that there was not enough to justify a revolution, the
opposition of an armed force against authority legally established, or
the involvement of the country in the dangers to which it was exposed.
The army had been drawn towards its old chief by a strong sentiment of
attachment and generous devotion, rather than from views of personal
interest; the army, too, was national and popular; but nothing could
change the nature of acts or the meaning of words. The violation of an
oath, desertion with arms in their hands, the sudden passing over from
one camp to another, have always been condemned by honour as well as
duty, civil or military, and denominated treason. Individuals, nations,
or armies, men under the influence of a controlling passion, may
contemn, at the first moment, or perhaps do not feel the moral
impression which naturally attaches itself to their deeds; but it never
fails to present itself, and, when seconded by the warnings of prudence
or the blows of misfortune, it soon regains its empire.

It was the evil destiny of the Government of the Hundred Days that the
influence of moral opinion ranged itself on the side of its adversaries
the Royalists; and that the conscience of the nation, clearly or
obscurely, spontaneously or reluctantly, justified the severe judgments
to which its origin had given rise.

I and my friends attentively watched the progress of the Emperor's
affairs and of the public temper. We soon satisfied ourselves that
Napoleon would fall, and that Louis XVIII. would re-ascend the throne.
While this was our impression of the future, we felt hourly more
convinced that, from the deplorable state into which the enterprise of
the Hundred Days had plung