After Wagram, Napoleon himself perceived the waning of his star, and it was with a view of reassuring public opinion, as well as of providing for the future, that he divorced Josephine and married the Austrian archduchess, Marie-Louise. A year afterward, on the 20th of March, 1811, the policy of this marriage seemed to justify itself, and the Empire to have acquired a new security, by the birth of a son. A contemporary writer, M. de Saint-Amand, gives a lively picture of the emotions with which the Parisians awaited the news of this auspicious event. "All the inhabitants of the city knew that the reports of twenty-one cannon only would announce the birth of a daughter, but that if a son were born, there would be fired a hundred and one. The explosions of the artillery commenced. From the moment the first report was heard, the multitude kept perfectly silent. This silence was interrupted only by voices counting the sounds of the cannon,--one, two, three, four, and so on.
"The suspense of the waiting was solemn. When the twentieth report was heard, the emotion was indescribable; at the twenty-first, all the breasts were breathless; at the twenty-second, there was an outburst of joy which rose almost to delirium. Cries of delight, hats in the air, applaudings; it was an ovation, a victory over Destiny, which it seemed was to be henceforth the servant of Napoleon."
Nevertheless, three years later, the Allies were in Paris, and the Senate, convoked and directed by Talleyrand,--to whom the Chancellor Pasquier, qualified by Taine as "the best informed and the most judicious witness for the first half of this century," denies every quality of "the heart or the soul," the superiority of talent with which he is generally credited, and even the sole virtue usually left him by his detractors, that of having skilfully and worthily represented France at the Congress of Vienna,--named a provisional government, on the 1st of April, 1811. On the 3d, it pronounced the end of Napoleon's power; on the 6th, it adopted a new constitution and called to the throne a brother of Louis XVI, who became Louis XVIII.
[Illustration: THE FLOWERS. CEILING DECORATION FOR THE GRANDE SALLE DES FÊTES IN THE NEW HOTEL DE VILLE.