By these measures he contrived to win over a large part of the people, and, by degrees, the old Murat began to emerge from his hiding-place in the personality of the new. His council had agreed with him in almost every question of importance; the counsels which he received, while suggesting a constitution, were really sincere in their hopes for the maintenance of his dynasty. His army, which he had had time to put into shape again, was with him; the newspapers were obsequious in their praises of his virtues; and all the corporate bodies in the State announced their readiness to pledge their lives and property in his support. The Congress of Vienna began to pay some attention to these signs of popular approval, and it was noised abroad that the Emperor of Russia had let fall the remark that “it was impossible to restore the ‘Butcher King’ now that the interests of the people had to be considered.” Then Caroline of Austria, Ferdinand’s wife, died suddenly, and so little was her decease lamented that Francis forbade the Court to go into mourning for her. It may well be imagined that Joachim began to feel safe on his throne, and the fact that, by an agreement concluded at Charmont some little time before the fall of Napoleon, Austria, Russia, Prussia, and England had confirmed the principles of the alliance between Austria and Murat helped him to hope that after all, and in spite of everything, he might be allowed to remain. He had not reckoned, though, with Talleyrand, whose desire it was, just then, to show himself as a reformed character who was ready to do anything to prove his detestation of the fiend whom he had been serving, and of all the fiend’s family, which, of course, included Joachim. Talleyrand had besides a private grudge against Joachim, for the latter had openly mistrusted him for years, and Napoleon’s parting remarks on the subject of his late Minister for Foreign Affairs must still have been tingling in that gentleman’s ears when he set out for Vienna. “I should have hanged him long ago,” said the Emperor: “I always knew that he would be the first to betray me when the occasion offered itself!” Talleyrand, who had arrived at the Congress as an apologist both for France and himself, a man with no claims to consideration from anybody, outside the pale of Christian intercourse as an excommunicate bishop and an unfrocked priest, a creature at the sight of whom Francis and his Catholic princess must have shuddered; without a friend—or a case—bankrupt of power and credit—contrived by the sheer force of his own genius to dominate the whole Congress after the first half-dozen sittings.