Nor was Stanhope a moment too soon. With the greatest difficulty and only at an exorbitant price was he able to get horses and the promise of a voiturier who eventually sent his wife as driver in his place, being probably himself a suspected person who could not leave the city. At the last moment a message arrived from Mr Boyd, the banker, begging that he and his family might share Stanhope's flight. Such an offer to an enfeebled invalid was most acceptable, and accordingly Stanhope eventually left Paris in company with the banker, his wife and their two daughters. The scene as they went defied description; troops were marching, drums sounding, flags flying, crowds were collected in the streets with no particular object, and fugitives were vainly endeavouring to make way over the bridge where carriages were locked in a block which threatened disaster to their occupants. Nevertheless, Madame la voiturière, who, Stanhope explains, was not only dressed up to enact the part she had undertaken, but was "not of the mildest or most peaceable temper," forced a way through the mêlée with such success that, in due course, she deposited her travellers in safety at Brussels whither they were bound; when, to their extreme amusement, her task accomplished, she speedily "transformed herself into a Parisian _élégante_!" And even as they reached safety, into the city which they had left, Napoleon entered. By then the stampede of fugitives was ended, "and," writes John Stanhope, "I was informed that upon Bonaparte's arrival, a melancholy stillness seemed to pervade the streets. A few feeble cries of _Vive l'Empereur_ were raised, but only by his immediate partisans; for the most part the Parisians, as though uncertain of their feelings, maintained a morose and depressed silence." And in the midst of that brooding stillness, Napoleon entered upon the last phase of his greatness, his brief Reign of a Hundred Days. CHAPTER VII LETTERS FROM ENGLAND AND FRANCE 1811-1821