The Emperor, attended by Marshal Bertrand, General Brayer, and five or six other military men, appeared to be in a state of great agitation. He was pacing up and down, holding in his hand the proclamation of the night before, stepping at every moment on to the balcony, and leaving it with angry looks. When all had entered he stood in the middle of the apartment, and asked which was the mayor of Autun. "I am," said M. Piquot. "I know what you are," the Emperor replied, "a man always ready to pay court to nobles; one who would sacrifice his dignity for a dinner. You are mayor no longer; only a fanatic and a madman could have drawn up such an act as this. You dare to treat me as an usurper!" "Sire," said M. de la Chaise, president of the civil tribunal, "by your abdication you have freed us from our oaths, and we have sworn fealty to Louis XVIII." "I have abdicated, you say. I did it only to assure the happiness of the French. France is not happy. She recalls me, and you would oppose her.... Madman! you would have civil war, then!" "But, enfin, sire, you have abdicated." "Be silent!" cried Napoleon, angrily, "you are only a wretched attorney." We need not follow any further a quarrel which led nowhere. Amid the same cold silence that had marked his arrival, Napoleon left early the next morning, to face the last triumphs and the crushing disaster of those fateful hundred days.[67] Another visitor to the Hotel St. Louis was George Sand, who came in the midst of all the bustle and excitement of the fair of St. Ladre, on the 2nd September, 1836, and was served, with two children and a nurse, under a fruit tree in the garden into which the guests had overflowed. She must have overheard, at the large table, words which offended her, for, says St. Fonteney, she left her repast and the hotel in haste, and, two months afterwards, took a full revenge in the columns of the "Revue des deux Mondes," in which she referred darkly to the occasion as an "obscenity" and an "orgie of patricians." One would hardly have thought George Sand so squeamish.