The Congress at Vienna happened fortunately not to be dissolved, when the news of Buonaparte's escape from Elba was laid before them by Talleyrand, on the 11th March. The astonishing, as well as the sublime, approaches to the ludicrous, and it is a curious physiological fact, that the first news of an event which threatened to abolish all their labours, seemed so like a trick in a pantomime, that laughter was the first emotion it excited from almost every one. The merry mood did not last long; for the jest was neither a sound nor safe one. It was necessary for the Congress, by an unequivocal declaration, to express their sentiments, upon this extraordinary occasion. This declaration appeared on the 13th March, and after giving an account of the fact, bore the following denunciation:-- "By thus breaking the convention which had established him in the island of Elba, Buonaparte destroys the only legal title on which his existence depended; and, by appearing again in France with projects of confusion and disorder, he has deprived himself of the protection of the law, and has manifested to the universe, that there can be neither peace nor truce with him. "The powers consequently declare, that Napoleon Buonaparte has placed himself without the pale of civil and social relations, and that, as an enemy and disturber of the tranquillity of the world, he has rendered himself liable to public vengeance. They declare at the same time, that, firmly resolved to maintain entire the treaty of Paris of the 30th of May, 1814, and the dispositions sanctioned by that treaty, and those which they have resolved on, or shall hereafter resolve on, to complete and to consolidate it, they will employ all their means, and will unite all their efforts, that the general peace, the object of the wishes of Europe, and the constant purpose of their labours, may not again be troubled; and to provide against every attempt which shall threaten to replunge the world into the disorders of revolution."[110]