These expressions were highly disagreeable to the Chamber of Representatives, who at the same time regarded the presence of Napoleon in the capital as dangerous to their own power, and to the public tranquillity. The suburbs, with their fierce inmates, continued to be agitated, and soldiers, the straggling relics of the field of Waterloo, were daily gathering under the walls of Paris, furious at their recent defeat, and calling on their Emperor to lead them to vengeance. There seems to have been little to prevent Napoleon from still placing himself at the head of a small but formidable army. To remove him from this temptation, the Provisional Government required him to retire to the palace of Malmaison, near St. Germains, so long the favourite abode of the discarded Josephine. Napoleon had not been within its walls a single day, before, surrounded by Fouché's police, he found that he, who, not a month since, had disposed of the fate of myriads, was no longer the free master of his own actions. He was watched and controlled, though without the use of actual force, and now, for the first time, felt what it was to lose that free agency, of which his despotism had for so many years deprived so large a portion of mankind. Yet he seemed to submit to his fate with indifference, or only expressed impatience when beset by his personal creditors, who, understanding that he was not likely to remain long in France, attempted to extort from him a settlement of their claims. This petty persecution was given way to by the government, as one of several expedients to abridge his residence in France; and they had the means of using force, if all should fail. Short as was the time he lingered at Malmaison, incredible as it may be thought, Napoleon was almost forgotten in Paris. "No one," says a well-informed author, living in that city during the crisis, "except the immediate friends of government, pretends to know whether he is still at Malmaison, or seems to think it a question of importance to ask. On Saturday last, Count M---- saw him there; he was tranquil, but quite lost. His friends now pretend, that, since his return from Elba, he has never been quite the man he was."[169] There was, however, a reason for his protracting his residence at Malmaison, more honourable than mere human reluctance to submit to inevitable calamity.