t engaged on those steps, which circumstances
require for the public safety."

By the Emperor's orders, M. Carnot set out at the same moment, to make
a similar communication to the chamber of peers. It was listened to
there with suitable calmness: but M. Regnault, with his utmost
efforts, could not moderate the impatience of the representatives; and
they imperiously renewed their desire to the ministers, by a second
message, to appear at their bar.

The Emperor, offended at the chamber's arrogating to itself an
authority over his ministers, forbade them to stir. The deputies,
finding they did not come, considered their delay as _a contempt for
the nation_. Some, to whom contempt both of the Emperor and of
constitutional principles was already familiar, moved, that the
ministers should be ordered to attend the assembly, setting all other
business aside. Others, alarmed by their own consciences, and, fearing
a politic stroke, created phantoms of their own imagination.
Persuaded, that Napoleon was marching troops, to maim and dissolve the
national representation, they demanded with loud cries, that the
national guard should be summoned, to protect the chamber. Others
moved, that the command of this guard should be taken from the Emperor
and General Durosnel, and conferred on General Lafayette.

The Emperor, weary of all this noise, authorised his ministers, to
inform the president, that they should soon be with him: but not
choosing to let it be thought, that they obeyed the injunctions of the
chamber, he deputed them to it as bearers of an imperial message drawn
up for the purpose. Prince Lucien was appointed to accompany them,
under the title of commissioner general. That this innovation might
not hurt the feelings of the ministers, the Emperor said to them, that
Prince Lucien, by means of his temporary office of commissioner
general, might answer the interrogatories of the representatives,
without its having any future consequences, and without giving the
chamber a right to assert, that their power of sending for the
ministers and interrogating them had been acknowledged and conceded.
But this was not the real motive. The Emperor had not been satisfied
with the lukewarmness, which the majority of the ministers had
displayed; and he was desirous of placing in hands more to be depended
on the task of defending his person and his throne. At six o'clock the
ministers, with Prince Lucien at their head, were introduced int