However, Napoleon was not yet dethroned; more than forty thousand of the best soldiers in the world were around him; he was able to retire behind the Loire; the French armies which had arrived from Spain were growling in the South; the military population might bubble over and distribute its lava; even among the foreign leaders, there was still a question of Napoleon or his son reigning over France: for two days, Alexander hesitated. M. de Talleyrand, as I have said, secretly leant towards the policy which tended to crown the King of Rome, for he dreaded the Bourbons; if he did not then accept entirely the plan of the Regency of Marie-Louise, it was because, since Napoleon had not perished, he, the Prince de Bénévent, feared that he would not be able to retain the mastery during a minority threatened by the existence of a restless, erratic, enterprising man, still in the vigour of his age[141]. [Sidenote: _De Bonaparte et des Bourbons._] It was in those critical days that I threw down my pamphlet _De Bonaparte et des Bourbons_[142] to turn the scale: its result is well known. I flung myself headlong into the fray to serve as a shield to liberty reviving against tyranny still subsisting, with its strength increased threefold by despair. I spoke in the name of the Legitimacy, in order to add to my words the authority of positive affairs. I taught France what the old Royal Family was; I told her how many members of that Family existed, what their names were, and their character: it was as though I had drawn up a fist of the children of the Emperor of China, to so great an extent had the Republic and the Empire encroached upon the present and relegated the Bourbons to the past. Louis XVIII. declared, as I have already often mentioned, that my pamphlet was of greater profit to him than an army of one hundred thousand men; he might have added that it was a certificate of existence to him. I assisted in giving him the crown a second time by the fortunate issue of the Spanish War. From the commencement of my political career, I became popular with the crowd; but, from that time also, I failed to make my way with powerful men. All who had been slaves under Bonaparte abhorred me; on the other side, I was an object of suspicion to all who wished to place France in a state of vassalage. At the first moment, among the sovereigns, I had none on my side except Bonaparte himself. He looked through my pamphlet at Fontainebleau: the Duc de Bassano[143] had brought it to him; he discussed it impartially, saying: "This is true; that is not true. I have nothing to reproach Chateaubriand with: he resisted me when I was in power; but those scoundrels, so and so!" and he named them. My admiration for Bonaparte was always great and sincere, even at the time when I was attacking Napoleon with the greatest eagerness.