All resistance disappeared before Napoleon's advance as he passed Autun and descended the Yonne valley toward Paris. Everywhere there were dissensions among the populace, but the enthusiasm of the soldiers and their sympathizers triumphed. The troops despatched by the King's government to overpower the "usurper" sooner or later went over to the "usurper's" standards. One morning a placard was found on the railing around the Vendome column: "Napoleon to Louis XVIII. My good brother, it is useless to send me any more troops; I have enough." Paris was in a storm of suppressed excitement. The measures of resistance were half-hearted; the King made lavish concessions and the chambers passed excellent laws without attracting any attention or sympathy; volunteers were raised, but there was no energy in their organization. When Napoleon reached Fontainebleau on the eighteenth, the reserves stationed in and near Paris on the south came over to him in a body. On the nineteenth Louis issued a despairing address to the army, and fled to Lille; on the morning of the twentieth the capital found itself without any vestige of government. The streets were thronged with people, but there was no disorder until a band of royalists attacked a half-pay officer wearing the imperial cockade. At once the city guard formed and intervened to quell the disturbance. Thereupon the imperialists endeavored to seize the Tuileries; they, too, were checked, and a double force, royalist and imperial, was set to defend that important spot. Over other public buildings the imperial colors waved alone and undisturbed. During the afternoon the crowds dispersed and the imperial officials quietly resumed their places. At nine in the evening a post-chaise rolled up to the Tuileries gate, Napoleon alighted, and the observers thought his smile was like that of one walking in a dream. At once he was caught in the brawny arms of his admirers, and handed upward from step to step, from landing to landing. So fierce was the affection of his friends that his life seemed to be in danger from their embraces, and it was with relief that he entered his cabinet and closed the door, to find himself among a few of his old stanch and tried servants, with Caulaincourt at their head. This reception had been in sharp contrast to the apathy displayed on the streets, where the people were few in number, unenthusiastic, and indifferent. "They let me come," said Napoleon to Mollien, "as they let the other go." Finding himself unable to endure the loneliness of the Tuileries, and depressed by the associations of the familiar scenes, he withdrew in a few days to the comparative seclusion of the Elysee, then a suburban mansion dubbed by courtesy a palace.