1815.
My departure from Hamburg-The King at St. Denis--Fouche appointed Minister of the Police--Delay of the King's entrance into Paris--Effect of that delay--Fouche's nomination due to the Duke of Wellington--Impossibility of resuming my post--Fouche's language with respect to the Bourbons--His famous postscript--Character of Fouche--Discussion respecting the two cockades--Manifestations of public joy repressed by Fouche--Composition of the new Ministry--Kind attention of Blucher--The English at St. Cloud--Blucher in Napoleon's cabinet--My prisoner become my protector--Blucher and the innkeeper's dog--My daughter's marriage contract--Rigid etiquette--My appointment to the Presidentship of the Electoral College of the Yonne--My interview with Fouche--My audience of the King--His Majesty made acquainted with my conversation with Fouche--The Duke of Otranto's disgrace--Carnot deceived by Bonaparte--My election as deputy--My colleague, M. Raudot--My return to Paris--Regret caused by the sacrifice of Ney--Noble conduct of Macdonald--A drive with Rapp in the Bois de Boulogne--Rapp's interview with Bonaparte in 1815--The Due de Berri and Rapp--My nomination to the office of Minister of State--My name inscribed by the hand of Louis XVIII.--Conclusion.
The fulfilment of my prediction was now at hand, for the result of the Battle of Waterloo enabled Louis XVIII. to return to his dominions. As soon as I heard of the King's departure from Ghent I quitted Hamburg, and travelled with all possible haste in the hope of reaching Paris in time to witness his Majesty's entrance. I arrived at St. Denis on the 7th of July, and, notwithstanding the intrigues that were set on foot, I found an immense number of persons assembled to meet the King. Indeed, the place was so crowded that it was with the greatest difficulty I could procure even a little garret for my lodging.
Having resumed my uniform of a captain of the National Guard, I proceeded immediately to the King's palace. The salon was filled with ladies and gentlemen who had come to congratulate the King on his return. At St.
Denis I found my family, who, not being aware that I had left Hamburg, were much surprised to see me.
They informed me that the Parisians were all impatient for the return of the King--a fact of which I could judge by the opposition manifested to the free expression of public feeling. Paris having been declared in a state of blockade, the gates were closed, and no one was permitted to leave the capital, particularly by the Barriere de la Chapelle. It is true that special permission might be obtained, and with tolerable ease, by those who wished to leave the city; but the forms to be observed for obtaining the permission deterred the mass of the people from proceeding to St. Denis, which, indeed, was the sole object of the regulation. As it had been resolved to force Fouche and the tri-coloured cockade upon the King, it was deemed necessary to keep away from his Majesty all who might persuade him to resist the proposed measures. Madame de Bourrienne told me that on her arrival at St. Denis she called upon M. Hue and M.
Lefebvre, the King's physician, who both acquainted her with those fatal resolutions. Those gentlemen, however, assured her that the King would resolutely hold out against the tri-coloured cockade, but the nomination of the ill-omened man appeared inevitable.
Fouche Minister of the Police! If, like Don Juan, I had seen a statue move, I could not have been more confounded than when I heard this news.
I could not credit it until it was repeated to me by different persons.
How; indeed, could I think that at the moment of a reaction the King should have entrusted the most important ministerial department to a man to whose arrest he had a hundred days before attached so much consequence? to a man, moreover, whom Bonaparte had appointed, at Lyons, to fill the same office! This was inconceivable! Thus, in less than twenty-four hours, the same man had been entrusted to execute measures the most opposite, and to serve interests the most contradictory. He was one day the minister of usurpation, and the next the minister of legitimacy! How can I express what I felt when Fouche took the oath of fidelity to Louis XVIII. when I saw the King clasp in his hands the hands of Fouche! I was standing near M. de Chateaubriand, whose feelings must have been similar to mine, to judge from a passage in his admirable work, 'La Monarchie selon la Charte'. "About nine in the evening," he says, "I was in one of the royal antechambers. All at once the door opened, and I saw the President of the Council enter leaning on the arm of the new minister. Oh, Louis-le-Desire! Oh, my unfortunate master! you have proved that there is no sacrifice which your people may not expect from your paternal heart!"
Fouche was resolved to have his restoration as well as M. de Talleyrand, who had had his the year before; he therefore contrived to retard the King's entry into Paris for four days. The prudent members of the Chamber of Peers, who had taken no part in the King's Government in 1814, were the first to declare that it was for the interest of France to hasten his Majesty's entrance into Paris, in order to prevent foreigners from exercising a sort of right of conquest in a city which was a prey to civil dissension and party influence. Blucher informed me that the way in which Fouche contrived to delay the King's return greatly contributed to the pretensions of the foreigners who, he confessed, were very well pleased to see the population of Paris divided in opinion, and to hear the alarming cries raised by the confederates of the Faubourgs when the King was already at St. Denis.
