taken and retaken many times. The Emperor was furious that Blucher
should have escaped. As he returned to headquarters, which had been
established at Mezieres, his Majesty narrowly escaped being pierced
through with the lance of a Cossack; but before the Emperor perceived the
movement of the wretch, the brave Colonel Gourgaud, who was marching
behind his Majesty, shot the Cossack dead with his pistol.

The Emperor had with him only fifteen thousand men, and they had waged an
equal struggle with eighty thousand foreign soldiers. At the close of
the combat the Prussians retreated to Bar-sur-Aube; and his Majesty
established himself in the chateau of Brienne, where he passed two
nights. I recalled during this stay the one that I had made ten years
before in this same chateau of Brienne, when the Emperor was on his way
to Milan with the intention of adding the title of King of Italy to that
of Emperor of the French. "To-day," I said to myself, "not only is Italy
lost to him, but here in the center of the French Empire, and a few
leagues from his capital, the Emperor is defending himself against
innumerable enemies!" The first time I saw Brienne, the Emperor was
received as a sovereign by a noble family who fifteen years before had
welcomed him as a protege. He had there revived the happiest
remembrances of his childhood and youth; and in comparing himself in 1805
with what he had been at the Ecole Militaire had spoken with pride of the
path he had trod. In 1814, on the 31st of January, the end to which this
path was tending began to be seen. It is not that I wish to announce
myself as having foreseen the Emperor's fall, for I did not go so far as
that. Accustomed to see him trust to his star, the greater part of those
who surrounded him trusted it no less than he; but nevertheless we could
not conceal from ourselves that great changes had taken place. To delude
ourselves in this respect it would have been necessary to close our eyes
that we might neither see nor hear this multitude of foreigners, whom we