Napoleon hurriedly made for Fontainebleau[114]: there a sainted victim[115], retiring, had left the requiter and the avenger. Two things in history always go side by side: let a man enter upon a path of injustice, and he at the same time opens for himself a path of perdition in which, at a given distance, the first road will converge into the second. * Men's minds were greatly agitated: the hope of at all costs seeing brought to a close a cruel war which, since twenty years, had been weighing down upon France sated with misfortune and glory, this hope carried the day, among the masses, over the feeling of nationality. Each one thought of the part he would have to take in the approaching catastrophe. Every evening my friends came to talk at Madame de Chateaubriand's, to tell and comment upon the events of the day. Messieurs de Fontanes, de Clausel, Joubert gathered with the crowd of those transient friends whom events bring and events withdraw. Madame la Duchesse de Lévis, beautiful, peaceable and devoted, whom we shall meet again at Ghent, kept Madame de Chateaubriand faithful company. Madame la Duchesse de Duras was also in Paris, and I often went to see Madame la Marquise de Montcalm[116], sister to the Duc de Richelieu[117]. I continued to be persuaded, despite the near approach of the battle-fields, that the Allies would not enter Paris and that a national insurrection would put an end to our fears. The obsession of this idea prevented me from feeling the presence of the foreign armies as keenly as I might have done: but I could not keep myself from reflecting upon the calamities to which we had subjected Europe, when I saw Europe bring them back to us. I never ceased working at my pamphlet; I was preparing it as a remedy when the moment of anarchy should come to burst forth. It is not thus that we write nowadays, when we live at our ease, with only a war of broadsheets to fear: at night, I turned the key in my lock; I placed my papers under my pillow, with two loaded revolvers on my table: I slept between these two muses. My text was in duplicate: I had written it in the form of a pamphlet, which it retained, and in the shape of a speech, differing in some respects from the pamphlet; I thought that, when France rose, they might assemble at the Hôtel de Ville, and I had prepared myself on two topics. Madame de Chateaubriand wrote a few notes at various periods of our common life; among those notes I find the following paragraph: