of taking an active part in the general struggle waged against the enemy
who kept them far from their country by the very fact of his existence and
his power. The First Consul had offered an amnesty to all the emigrants,
restored their property to some, and attracted a certain number of them
round his own person; he had recalled the priests, and re-established the
Catholic religion; but he had repelled the advances of the House of
Bourbon. His hostility to the restoration of the monarchy had always been
flagrant; the throne might be re-erected, but it should be for his own
profit. He alone was the obstacle to the hopes cherished by the exiled
princes and their friends, in presence of the re-establishment of order
and the public prosperity. Delivered from his yoke, that pressed heavily
upon her, France would salute with enthusiasm the return of her legitimate
sovereign.

It was in England even, and amongst the circle that surrounded the Count
d'Artois, that expression was given to these hopes and ignorant illusions
as to the true state of men's minds in France. The Princes of the House of
Conde, recently enrolled with their little army in the service of England,
held themselves ready to fight, without conspiring. Louis XVIII. lived in
Germany, withdrawn from the centre of warlike preparations; he was cold,
sensible, and prudent; he thought little of plots, and had a healthier
judgment than his brother as to the chances which might restore his
fortune. The actual resources, the noisy agents of the emigration, were
collected in England: there were found the chiefs of the Chouans, with
Georges Cadoudal at their head; there dwelt the generals who had had the
misfortune to abandon their country or betray their honor--Willot,
Dumouriez, Pichegru; there were hatched chimerical projects, impressed
from the first with the fatal errors and the terrible ignorance which doom
to inevitable sterility the hopes and the efforts of exiles.