permitted the leisure and opportunity which the Bourbons now enjoyed. These allegations, secretly insinuated, and at length loudly murmured, had their usual effects upon the fickle temper of the public; and, as the temporary enthusiasm in favour of the Bourbons faded into indifference and aversion, the general horror of Buonaparte's ambitious and tyrannical disposition began to give way to the recollection of his active, energetic, and enterprising qualities. This change must soon have been known to him who was its object. An expression is said to have escaped from him during his passage to Elba, which marked at least a secret feeling that he might one day recover the high dignity from which he had fallen. "If Marius," he observed, "had slain himself in the marshes of Minturnæ, he would never have enjoyed his seventh consulate." What was perhaps originally but the vague aspirations of an ardent spirit striving against adversity, became, from the circumstances of France, a plausible and well-grounded hope. It required but to establish communications among his numerous and zealous partisans, with instructions to hold out such hopes as might lure the Jacobins to his standard, and to profit by and inflame the growing discontents and divisions of France; and a conspiracy was almost ready formed, with little exertion on the part of him who soon became its object and its centre. Various affiliations and points of rendezvous were now arranged to recruit for partisans. The ladies of the Ex-Emperor's court, who found themselves humiliated at that of the King by the preference assigned to noble birth, were zealous agents in these political intrigues, for offended pride hesitates at no measures for obtaining vengeance. The purses of their husbands and lovers were of course open to these fair intriguers, and many of them devoted their jewels to forward the cause of Revolution. The chief of these female conspirators was Hortensia Beauharnois, wife of Louis Buonaparte, but now separated from her husband, and bearing the title of the Duchess of Saint Leu. She was a person of considerable talents, and of great activity and address. At Nanterre, Neuilly, and Saint Leu, meetings of the conspirators were held, and Madame Hamelin, the confidant of the duchess, is said to have assisted in concealing some of the principal agents.