r bad and good
fortune. Although one of your royal race, I am your subject, servant,
and soldier. Do with me as your majesty pleases, for the honor and
peace of our country."

The king sent him to Lyons; to co-operate with the king's brother,
the Count d'Artois, subsequently Charles X., in the endeavor to
retard, by every means in their power, the advance of the ex-emperor
upon Paris. A council of war was immediately held, the Count d'Artois
presiding. Marshal Macdonald proved to the satisfaction of all
present that it would be impossible to prevent the occupation of
Lyons by Napoleon. Thence his march to Paris would be unimpeded.

All was consternation in the Bourbon Court. Louis Philippe broke up
his establishment, and dispatched his wife and family, by the most
expeditious route, to England. The armies of France were concentrated
as rapidly as possible on the borders of the Rhine, where the allied
troops could hurry to their support. The Duke of Orleans was invested
with the command of this army of the north. Louis XVIII., surrounded
by a small body of Guards, entered his carriage and fled
precipitately across the Rhine, to place himself again under the
protection of the allied sovereigns who were convened in Congress at
Vienna.

The accompanying cut will give the reader a vivid idea of the
departure. The king was enormously fat. His figure, with long body
and very short legs, was peculiar almost to deformity. He entered his
carriage for his flight, with apparently none to regret his
departure, at one o'clock, on the morning of the 19th of March. The
evening of the next day, the 20th, the emperor arrived, and,
surrounded by the acclamations of thousands, was borne, in a scene of
indescribable enthusiasm, on the shoulders of the people into the
vacant palace.

[Illustration: LOUIS XVIII. LEAVING PARIS.]

"The moment that the carriage stopped," says Alison, "he was seized
by those next the door, borne aloft in their arms, amidst deafening
cheers, through a dense and brilliant crowd of epaulets, hurried
literally above the heads of the throng up the great staircase into
the saloon of reception, where a splendid array of the ladies of the
imperial court, adorned with a profusion of violet bouquets, half
concealed in the richest laces, received him with transports, and
imprinted fervent kisses on his cheeks, his hands, and even his
dress. Never was such a scene witnessed in history."

This triumphal journey of Na