Imperialists and Liberals, it is you into whose hands the power fell, you who knelt down before the sons of Henry IV. It was quite natural that the Royalists should be happy to recover their Princes and to see the end of the reign of him whom they regarded as an usurper; but you, the creatures of that usurper, surpassed the feelings of the Royalists in exaggeration. The ministers, the high dignitaries vied with each other in taking the oath to the Legitimacy; all the civil and judicial authorities crowded on each other's heels to swear hatred against the proscribed new dynasty and love to the ancient race whom they had a hundred and a hundred times condemned. Who drew up those proclamations, those adulatory addresses, so insulting to Napoleon, with which France was flooded? The Royalists? No: the ministers, the generals, the authorities chosen and maintained in office by Bonaparte. Where was the jobbing of the Restoration done? At the Royalists'? No: at M. de Talleyrand's. With whom? With M. de Pradt, almoner to "the God Mars" and mitred mountebank. Where and with whom did the Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom dine on his arrival? At the Royalists' and with Royalists? No: at the Bishop of Autun's, with M. de Caulaincourt. Where were entertainments given to "the infamous foreign princes?" At the country-houses of the Royalists? No: at Malmaison, at the Empress Joséphine's. To whom did Napoleon's dearest friends, Berthier, for instance, carry their ardent devotion? To the Legitimacy. Who spent their existences with the Emperor Alexander, with that brutal Tartar? The classes of the Institute, the scholars, the men of letters, the philosophers, philanthropists, theophilanthropists and others; they returned enchanted, laden with praises and snuff-boxes. As for us poor devils of Legitimists, we were admitted nowhere; we went for nothing. Sometimes we were told, in the streets, to go home to bed; sometimes we were recommended not to shout "God Save the King!" too loud, others having undertaken that responsibility. So far from compelling anyone to be a Legitimist, those in power declared that nobody would be obliged to change his conduct or his language, that the Bishop of Autun would be no more compelled to say Mass under the Royalty than he had been compelled to attend it under the Empire. I saw no lady of the castle-keep, no Joan of Arc proclaim the rightful sovereign with falcon on wrist or lance in hand; but Madame de Talleyrand[205], whom Bonaparte had fastened to her husband like a sign-board, drove through the streets in a calash, singing hymns on the pious Family of the Bourbons. A few sheets fluttering from the windows of the familiars of the Imperial Court made the good Cossacks believe that there were as many lilies in the hearts of the converted Bonapartists as white rags at their casements. It is wonderful how far contagion will go in France, and a man would cry, "Off with my head!" if he heard his neighbour cry the same.