"On setting foot on our dear France," continued he, after a few unimportant answers from his auditors, "I made a vow to render it free and happy: I bring nothing to it but benefits. I am returned to protect and defend those interests, to which our revolution has given birth: I return to concur with the representatives of the nation in a family compact, that shall preserve for ever the liberty and the rights of every Frenchman: henceforward it will be my ambition, and my glory, to effect the happiness of the great people from whom I hold every thing. I will not, like Louis XVIII., grant you a revocable charter; I will give you an inviolable constitution, and it shall be the work of the people, as well as of myself." Such were his words. He pronounced them with an air of such satisfaction, he appeared so confident of himself and of the future, that a man would have thought himself criminal to suspect the purity of his intentions, or to doubt the happiness he was about to secure to France. The language he held at Lyons we perceive was not the same, as that he had uttered at Gap and at Grenoble. In the last-mentioned towns he sought principally to excite in men's minds hatred of the Bourbons, and the love of liberty: he had spoken as a citizen, rather than a monarch. No formal declaration, not a single word, revealed his intentions. It might as well have been supposed, that he thought of restoring the republic, or the consulship, as the empire. At Lyons, there was no longer any thing vague, any thing uncertain: he spoke as a sovereign, and promised to give a national constitution. The idea of the Champ de Mai had recurred to him. Not one of us suspected the sincerity of the promises and resolves of Napoleon. Time, reflection, misfortune, the grand teacher of mankind, had effected the most favourable changes in the principles of Napoleon. Formerly, when unforeseen obstacles arose, suddenly to thwart his projects, his passions, accustomed to no restraint, to respect no bridle, burst forth with the fury of a raging sea: he spoke, he ordered, he decided, as if he had been master of the earth and of the elements; nothing appeared to him impossible. After his reverse of fortune, he had learned in the calm of solitude and meditation, to control the violence of his will, and to subject it to the yoke of reason and prudence. He had read attentively the writings, pamphlets, and even libels, published against him: and amid the revilings, calumnies, and absurdities, which they frequently contained, he had found useful truths, judicious observations, and profound views, of which he knew how to benefit himself.