It was, therefore, not a mere hallucination which led him to hope that once again the tangled web of affairs might be severed by a sweep of the soldier's saber. But of course in the crisis of his great decision he could not stand alone; he must be sure of his lieutenants. Accordingly, after a few hours of secret communing, he summoned a council, and laid before it his considerations substantially as enumerated. Those present were Berthier, Ney, Lefebvre, Caulaincourt, and Maret; Oudinot and Macdonald, at Bar on the Ornain and Perthes respectively, were too distant to arrive in time, but he believed that he knew their opinion, which was that the war should be continued either in Lorraine or from a center of operations to be established at Sens. From this conclusion Macdonald did not once waver; Oudinot had begun to hedge; their absence, therefore, was unimportant. Berthier was verging on desperation, and so was Caulaincourt, who, since leaving Chatillon, had been vainly struggling to reopen negotiations for peace on any terms; Ney, though physically brave, was not the stuff from which martyrs are made, and Lefebvre, naturally weak, was laboring under a momentary attack of senility. The council was imperative for peace at any price; the Emperor, having foreseen its temper, had little difficulty in taking the military steps for carrying out its behests. Early in the morning of March twenty-eighth the army was set in motion toward Paris. The line of march was to be through Bar on the Aube, Troyes, and Fontainebleau, a somewhat circuitous route, chosen apparently for three reasons: because the region to be traversed would still afford sustenance to the men, because the Seine would protect its right flank, and because the dangerous point of Meaux was thus avoided. Such a conclusion is significant of the clearest judgment and the nicest calculation. Pages have been written about Napoleon's hallucinations at the close of his career; neither here nor in any of the courses he adopted is there aught to sustain the charge. At breakfast-time a squad of jubilant peasants brought in a prisoner whom they believed to be no less a person than the Comte d'Artois. In reality it was Weissenberg, an Austrian ambassador on his way to London. He was promptly liberated on parole and despatched with letters to Francis and Metternich. By a curious adventure, Vitrolles was in the minister's suite disguised as a serving-man, but he was not detected. [Illustration: Map of the field of operations in 1814.]