Having accompanied His Majesty everywhere, I was with him at Troyes, in the morning of March 30. The Emperor left there at ten o'clock, followed solely by the grand marshal and the Duc de Vicenza. It was known then at headquarters that the allied troops were advancing on Paris ; but we were far from suspecting that at the very moment of His Majesty's precipitate departure, the battle before Paris was raging with its utmost force; at least I had heard nothing which could induce me to believe it. I was ordered to go to Essonnes, and as means of transportation were scarce and difficult, I did not arrive until very early in the morning of the 31st. I had been there but a short time when a courier brought me an order to go to Fontainebleau, which I did at once. It was then I learned that the Emperor had gone from Troyes to Montereau in two hours, having travelled ten leagues in that short space of time. I also learned that the Emperor and his small suite had been obliged to have recourse to a covered cart in order to reach the Paris road, between Essonnes and Villejuif. He had advanced as far as the Cour de France, with the intention of marching on Paris; but there, having had the new and cruel certainty of the capitulation of Paris, he had despatched the courier of whom I have just spoken.

I had not been long at Fontainebleau when the Emperor arrived; he looked paler and more fatigued than I had ever seen him, and though he knew so well how to conceal the impressions of his soul, he apparently made no effort to hide the discouragement displayed in his attitude and countenance. One saw how he was tortured by all the disastrous events which for several days had been piling up in frightful progression.

The Emperor said nothing to any one, and shut himself up at once in his cabinet with the Ducs de Vicenza and de Bassano, and Prince de Neufchâtel. These gentlemen remained for a long time with the Emperor, who afterwards received several general officers. His Majesty went to bed very late, and I still thought him very much overcome; from time to time I heard stifled sighs escape him, and with them the name of Marmont, which I could not understand, as I had not yet heard how the capitulation of Paris had been made, and knew that the Duc de Raguse was one of those marshals for whom the Emperor had always had the most affection. That very evening I saw at Fontainebleau Marshal Moncey, who the day before had so valiantly commanded the National Guard at the barrier of Clichy, and the Marshal Duc de Dantzic.

I could not easily describe the sad and gloomy silence which pervaded Fontainebleau, on the two days that followed. Prostrated by so many blows, the Emperor seldom went into his cabinet where ordinarily he devoted so many hours to work. He was so absorbed by his conflicting thoughts that often he did not perceive that the persons he had summoned were near him; he looked at them, one might say, without seeing them, and sometimes remained half an hour without addressing them a word. Then, as if scarcely roused from this state of stupor, he would ask a question the answer to which he did not seem to hear; even the presence of the Duc de Bassano and the Duc de Vicenza, whom he called for most frequently, did not always interrupt this almost lethargic state of preoccupation. The hours for meals were the same as usual, and they were served in the customary way, but everything passed in a silence broken only by the inevitable noise made by the attendants. The same silence marked the toilet of the Emperor; not a word issued from his mouth, and if in the morning I would suggest to him one of the potions he was in the habit of taking, I not only got no answer, but no expression on his face, which I observed attentively, could make me suppose I had been heard. This state of affairs was horrible for all who were attached to His Majesty.

Was the Emperor really overcome by his bad fortune? Was his genius stupefied like his body? I will say with all frankness that, seeing him so different from what he was after the disasters of Moscow, and even a few days before when I quitted him at Troyes, I firmly believed this to be the case; but it was nothing of the kind: his soul was the victim of a fixed idea,- the idea of resuming the offensive and marching upon Paris. In fact, though he remained stupefied even when closeted with his most loyal ministers and most skilful generals, he was reanimated on beholding his soldiers, doubtless because he thought that the first would counsel him to prudence, while the others would never respond but by shouts of Long live the Emperor, to the most temerarious orders he might give. Hence, on the 2d of April, he momentarily shook off his depression to review, in the court of the palace, his guard, which had rejoined him at Fontainebleau. He spoke to his soldiers in a firm voice, and said:

"Soldiers! the enemy has stolen three marches from us and made himself master of Paris; we must drive him out of it. Unworthy Frenchmen, émigrés whom we had pardoned, have put on the white cockade and joined the enemies. The dastards! They will receive the price of this new attempt. Let us swear to conquer or to die, and to make respected this tricolored cockade which for twenty years has seen us on the path of glory and of honor."

The enthusiasm of the troops was extreme at the voice of their chief; they all cried: "Paris! Paris!" But on recrossing the threshold of the palace, the Emperor's depression returned in full force, doubtless because of his well-founded fear of seeing his immense desire of marching on Paris restrained by his lieutenants. I must add that it is only since then, in reflecting upon these events, that I have permitted myself to interpret in this fashion the struggles that were going on within the Emperor's soul; for at the time, wholly devoted to my service, I would not have dared even to conceive the notion of outstepping the circle of my ordinary functions.

Meanwhile events were becoming still more opposed to the plans and wishes of the Emperor. The Duc de Vicenza, whom he had sent to Paris, where a provisional government had been established under the presidency of Prince de Bénévent, came back unsuccessful from his mission to the Emperor Alexander, and each day His Majesty learned with keen sorrow the adhesion of the marshals and a great number of generals to the now government. That of Prince de Neufchâtel was especially painful to him, and I may say that, strangers as we were to the arrangements of policy, it struck all of us with astonishment.

Here I am under the necessity of speaking of myself, which I have done as seldom as possible in the course of my Memoirs, as I think my readers will do me the justice to admit; but what I have to say is too intimately connected with the last days I spent near the Emperor, and has too close a bearing on my personal honor, for me to suppose that any one will reproach me with it. I was, as may be believed, very anxious about the fate of my family, from whom I had received no news for a long time, and, moreover, the painful malady by which I was afflicted had made frightful progress in consequence of the fatigues of the last campaigns. And yet the moral sufferings to which I beheld the Emperor a prey so absorbed all my thoughts that I took no precaution whatever against the physical anguish which tormented me, and I had not even dreamed of asking a safeguard for the country-seat I owned in the environs of Fontainebleau. It had been seized by some free companies who had established their lodgings there after having pillaged, broken, and destroyed everything, even to the little flock of merino sheep which I owed to the kindness of the Empress Josephine. The Emperor having been informed of this, but not by me, said one morning at his toilet: "Constant, I owe you an indemnity." "Sire?" - "Yes, my child, I know that you have been pillaged; I know that you suffered considerable losses in the Russian campaign; I have given orders that you should receive fifty thousand francs to set over against that." I thanked His Majesty, who was indemnifying me in excess of my losses.

This happened in the early days of our last sojourn at Fontainebleau. At the same epoch, as the transportation of the Emperor to the island of Elba was already spoken of, the grand marshal of the palace one day asked me whether I could follow His Majesty to that residence. God is my witness that I had no other desire, no other thought than to consecrate all my life to the service of the Emperor; hence I needed not an instant of reflection to reply to the grand marshal that there could be no doubt about that, and I immediately began the needful preparations for a journey which was not of great length, but to which no human intelligence could then assign a term.

Meanwhile, in his privacy, the Emperor daily became more sad and anxious, and whenever I saw him alone, which often happened, I tried to be near him as much as possible. I noticed that he was greatly disturbed by reading the despatches he received from Paris; this agitation was so extreme that I perceived that he had torn his thighs with his nails until the blood came, without his having noticed it himself. I took the liberty then of apprising him of it as gently as I could, hoping thus to put an end to those violent preoccupations which broke my heart. Several times, also, the Emperor demanded his pistols from Roustan; happily I had taken the precaution, on seeing His Majesty so tormented, to advise him never to give them to him, no matter how insistent the Emperor might be. I thought it my duty to acquaint the Duc de Vicenza with all this, and he approved entirely of what I had done.
One morning, I no longer remember whether it was the 10th or the 11th of April, but it was certainly one of the two, the Emperor, who had not spoken to me in the morning, sent for me during the day. I had scarcely entered his room when he said to me, with the accent of the most obliging kindliness. "My dear Constant, here is an order for one hundred thousand francs, which you will go and get cashed at Peyrache's; if your wife comes here before our departure, give them to her; if she delays, bury them in a corner of your grounds; take an exact description of the place and send it to her by a trusty person. When a man has served me well, he ought not to be poor! Your wife will buy a farm or invest the money; she will live with your mother and sister, and you will no longer be afraid of leaving them in want." Still more affected by the provident kindness of the Emperor, who was deigning to descend into the details of my family interests, than satisfied with the richness of the present he had just made me, I could scarcely find words to express my gratitude; and such, moreover, was our carelessness about the future, so far were we from the mere notion that the great Empire could have an end, that it was only then that I thought of the distress in which I would have left my family if the Emperor had not so generously provided for them. I had in fact no fortune, and possessed nothing in the world but my devastated house and the fifty thousand francs intended to repair it.

Under these circumstances, not knowing when I should see my wife again, I set about following the advice His Majesty had kindly given me. I converted my one hundred thousand francs into gold, which I put into five sacks. I took with me the wardrobe waiter, named Denis, whose probity was equal to every trial, and we went by the forest road, so as not to be seen by any of the persons inhabiting my house. We cautiously entered a small enclosure which belonged to me, and the door of which was concealed by the woods, though they were still devoid of leafage; with the assistance of Denis I succeeded in burying my treasure after having taken an exact description of the place, and I returned to the palace, far enough certainly from foreseeing what chagrins and tribulations were to be caused me by those cursed hundred thousand francs, as will be seen in one of the succeeding chapters.