with the due military ceremonies. White flags and cockades everywhere
disappeared; the tri-colour resumed its pride of place. It was spring,
and true to its season the violet had reappeared! The joy of the
soldiers and the lower orders was almost frantic, but even among the
industrious poor there were not wanting many who regretted this
precipitate return to the old order of things--to conscription, war, and
bloodshed, while in the superior classes of society there was a pretty
general consternation. The vain, volatile soldiery, however, thought of
nothing but their Emperor, saw nothing before them but the restoration of
all their laurels, the humiliation of England, and the utter defeat of
the Russians, Prussians, and Austrians.

On the night between the 19th and 20th of March Napoleon reached
Fontainebleau, and again paused, as had formerly been his custom, with
short, quick steps through the antiquated but splendid galleries of that
old palace. What must have been his feelings on revisiting the chamber
in which, the year before, it is said he had attempted suicide!

Louis XVIII., left the Palace of the Tuileries at nearly the same hour
that Bonaparte entered that of Fontainebleau.

The most forlorn hope of the Bourbons was now in a considerable army
posted between Fontainebleau and Paris. Meanwhile the two armies
approached each other at Melun; that of the King was commanded by Marshal
Macdonald. On the 20th his troops were drawn up in three lines to
receive the invaders, who were said to be advancing from Fontainebleau.
There was a long pause of suspense, of a nature which seldom fails to
render men more accessible to strong and sudden emotions. The glades of
the forest, and the acclivity which leads to it, were in full view of the
Royal army, but presented the appearance of a deep solitude. All was