This period, in which all are lacking in frankness, oppresses the heart: every one threw out a profession of faith as it were a foot-bridge to cross the difficulty of the day, free to change his direction, the difficulty once passed; youth alone was sincere, because it was near its cradle. Bonaparte solemnly declared that he renounced the crown; he departed, and returned after nine months. Benjamin Constant printed his vehement protest against the tyrant, and he changed in twenty-four hours. It will be seen later, in another book of these Memoirs, who inspired him with the noble impulse to which the fickleness of his nature did not permit him to remain faithful. Marshal Soult excited the troops against their old leader; a few days later he was roaring with laughter at his own proclamation in Napoleon's closet at the Tuileries, and became Major-general of the army at Waterloo; Marshal Ney kissed the King's hands, swore to bring him Bonaparte locked up in an iron cage, and handed over to the latter all the corps under his command. And the King of France, alas? He declared that, at the age of sixty years, he could not better end his career than by dying in defense of his people ... and fled to Ghent! At sight of this incapacity for truth in men's feelings, at the want of harmony between their words and their deeds, one feels seized with disgust for the human kind. Louis XVIII., on the 16th of March, was declaring his intention of dying in the midst of France; had he kept his word, the Legitimacy might have lasted another century; nature herself seemed to have taken from the old King the power of retreating by chaining him about with wholesome infirmities; but the future destinies of the human race would have been trammelled by the accomplishment of the resolution of the author of the Charter. Bonaparte hastened to the assistance of the future; that Christ of the power for evil took the new man sick of the palsy by the hand, and said to him: "Arise, take up thy bed, and walk[255]." * It was evident that a scamper was being contemplated: for fear of being detained, they did not even warn those who, like myself, would have been shot within an hour after Napoleon's entry into Paris. I met the Duc de Richelieu in the Champs-Élysées: "They are deceiving us," he said; "I am keeping watch here, for I do not propose to await the Emperor at the Tuileries all by myself." [Sidenote: Flight of Louis XVIII.]