It cannot be doubted that Napoleon was fully aware of whatever was proposed at Vienna, and it is absolutely certain that he was thoroughly informed as to the changed state of public opinion in France. Having promised a fairly liberal constitution as the price of his throne, Louis XVIII, with colossal stupidity, undertook to ignore the past and promulgated the charter as his own gracious act, done in the nineteenth year of his reign! The upper chamber, or House of Peers, was his creature, since he could create members at will. Feeble in mind and body, he was unable to check the reactionary assumptions of his family, who, having deserted their country, had returned to it by the aid of invaders despised and feared by the nation. These and the returning emigrants were provided with rich sinecures, and began to talk of restoring estates to their rightful owners; in some cases the possessors, on their death-beds, were intimidated into making such restitution. The extreme clerical party began even to hamper the ministry in its efforts to grant the freedom of worship guaranteed by the constitution. Secular business was forbidden on certain holy days, and funeral masses were celebrated for Pichegru, Moreau, and Cadoudal, that for the latter at the King's expense. When, finally, Christian burial was refused to an actress, there were riots in Paris. But the government continued its suicidal course; even the Vendee grew disaffected, and, the suffrage having been greatly restricted, there were murmurings about oligarchies and tyrants. At Nimes the Protestants feared another St. Bartholomew, and said so. Even moderate royalists grew troubled, and could not retort when they heard the new order stigmatized by the fitting name of "paternal anarchy." Both veterans and conscripts deserted in great numbers from the army as they saw their officers discharged by the score to make places for the young aristocracy, or their comrades retired, nominally on half-pay, in reality to eke out a subsistence as best they could. It was not long before men showed each other pocket-pieces bearing Napoleon's effigy, whispering as watchwords, "Courage and hope," or "He has been and will be," or "Frenchmen, awake; the Emperor is waking." As early as July, 1814, rumors of his return were rife in country districts, and by autumn the longing for it was outspoken and general. In Paris there was greater caution, but as Marmont was called "Judas" for having betrayed his master, so Berthier was known as "Peter" in that he had denied him, and it was a common joke to tie a white cockade to the tail of a dog. Before the Chamber met the various factions openly avowed themselves as either royalists, Bonapartists, liberals, or Jacobins. The money estimates presented made it clear that a king was more expensive than an emperor, and when the peers not only voted to indemnify the emigrants for the lands held by their families, but