That monarch now swore to the constitution of 1812. He opened, dissolved, and reopened a Parliament, and generally walked in the popular path. Those happenings, naturally, reacted upon the Neapolitans and helped to undermine Joachim’s position badly. The Carbonari broke out again, soon afterwards, and Joachim began to be afraid lest these popular spasms should come to the ears of the Congress and affect his interests; so he attempted to arrange matters with the Carbonari, which only went to their heads and made them more offensive than ever. Things could not remain so for long, and there is no saying what might have happened had not Napoleon discovered that the allied Powers had not the slightest idea of living up to their word with him, that the promised annuity—promised on the basis of the huge private fortune which they had looted from him—was never going to be paid, and that some one whom he had small difficulty in connecting with the Bourbon Government in Paris was attempting to poison him. On the evening of the 4th of March, 1815, Murat, with some of his family, was amusing himself as best he could, attempting to divert his mind from the problems and questions which had harassed him all day, in his wife’s apartments, when there appeared in the doorway a bowing attendant, begging the King and Queen Caroline to give an audience to a messenger who was awaiting their pleasure in the next room. Murat assented carelessly and told the attendant to bring him in, but the former replied that the newcomer had particularly asked that the King and Queen would give themselves the trouble to hear what he had to say, alone. By this time Murat had an inkling of the news which awaited him and hurried out of the room, the Queen upon his arm. In the small apartment, leading out of the gallery, they found Count Colonna, who came forward out of the dark corner where he had been waiting and presented his despatches. It is a picture that stands out vividly in the imagination: The Count studying Murat’s face as the latter reads the message, and glancing from time to time at the Queen, trying to read something of her husband’s mind in her face; Murat blinking in the half light over the words, rejoicing in the news as he thinks of the manner in which the Congress of Legitimacy has been treating him, but endeavouring to keep his features composed and his pleasure out of his voice. “That will spoil Metternich’s sleep for a while,” one can almost hear him saying to himself. “And Talleyrand—how will he get out of this? On guard, Messieurs! You will have to exercise something besides your tongues now!” Napoleon had escaped from Elba, and announced that he proposed to chase the Bourbons out of France, and suggested an alliance, begging Murat at the same time to place a battleship or a frigate at the disposition of his, the Emperor’s, mother and sister.