The scenes which had taken place in 1814 were renewed in 1815, but with something more offensive, because the ingrates were stimulated by fear; it was necessary to get rid of Napoleon quickly: the Allies were arriving; Alexander was not there, at first, to temper the triumph and curb the insolence of fortune; Paris was no more adorned with its lustral inviolability; a first invasion had profaned the sanctuary; it was no longer God's anger that fell upon us, it was the contempt of Heaven: the human thunder-bolt was spent. All the cowardly characters had acquired a new degree of malignity through the Hundred Days; affecting to raise themselves, through love of the country, above personal attachments, they exclaimed that it was really too criminal of Bonaparte to have violated the treaties of 1814. But were not the true culprits those who had countenanced his designs? Suppose that, in 1815, instead of getting new armies for him, after forsaking him once only to forsake him again, they had said to him, when he came to sleep at the Tuileries: "You have been deceived by your genius, opinion is no longer with you; take pity on France. Retire after this last visit to the country; go and live in the land of Washington. Who knows that the Bourbons will not make mistakes? Who knows that, one day, France will not turn her eyes towards you, when, in the school of liberty, you shall have learnt to respect the laws? You will then return, not as a ravisher swooping on his prey, but as a great citizen, the pacificator of his country!" They did not hold that language to them: they humoured the passions of their returned leader; they contributed to blinding him, sure as they were of benefiting by either his victory or his defeat. The soldier alone died for Napoleon, with admirable sincerity; the rest was but a grazing herd, growing fat to right and left. If, at least, the viziers of the despoiled caliph had been satisfied to turn their backs on him! But no: they reaped profit from his last moments; they overwhelmed him with their sordid demands; all wanted to make money out of his poverty. [Sidenote: Abandonment of Napoleon.] Never was a more complete abandonment; Bonaparte had given cause for it: he was insensible to the troubles of others; the world paid him with indifference for indifference. Like most despots, he was on good terms with his domestics; at bottom he cared for nobody: a solitary man, he sufficed unto himself; misfortune did nothing except to restore him to the desert which was his life.