The hundred days of Napoleon's second reign passed rapidly away. The defeat at Waterloo restored Louis XVIII. to the throne, with a better prospect of its permanent possession. Napoleon, in the long agony at St. Helena, expiated the crime of raising the banner of _Equal Rights for All Men_, in opposition to the exclusive privileges of kings and nobles. Louis XVIII., escorted by nearly a million of foreign troops, returned to the Tuileries. All the members of the royal family followed from their wide dispersion. Louis Philippe joined the crowd, and again presented himself in the royal saloons. The king suspected him, and in the presence of a full court received him with marked coldness. Conscious of his own unpopularity, and of the general impression that the Duke of Orleans was tinctured with liberal sentiments, the king was ever apprehensive that a faction might arise in favor of placing the Duke of Orleans upon the throne. The shrewd, intriguing Fouche, duke of Otranto, in a letter written to the Duke of Wellington at this time, says: "The personal qualities of the Duke of Orleans, the remembrance of Jemappes, the possibility of making a treaty which would conciliate all interests, the name of Bourbon, which might serve outside, but not be pronounced within--all these motives, and many others that might be mentioned, present in this last choice a perspective of repose and security even to those who could not perceive in them an omen of happiness." Though the king declined the assistance of the Duke of Orleans in reorganizing his government, he restored to him his vast ancestral possessions. Recrossing the Channel, the duke conducted his family from Twickenham back to the sumptuous saloons of the Palais Royal. A royal ordinance commanded all the princes of the blood royal to take seats in the Chamber of Peers. Under this decree the Duke of Orleans became a member of that august and influential body. And now commenced the reign of what was called the _Terreur Blanche_, or White Terror, consisting of a series of proscriptions and bloody executions, under the white flag of the Bourbons, which shocked the spirit of humanity. Unrelenting revenge was dominant. Marshal Ney, General Labedoyere, and many others of the noblest men in France, were ere long put to death or driven into exile. The friends of Louis XVIII. in the Chamber of Peers urged on these merciless executions. A resolution was introduced into that body and strongly supported, calling for the exemplary chastisement of all political delinquents. There were a few who indignantly repudiated this revengeful spirit.