"We swear it," answered all the soldiers with enthusiasm. They then filed off with shouts of "Long live the Emperor!" and to the sound of military music, playing the favourite tunes of the revolution, and the Marseillese march, so celebrated in the annals of our crimes and our victories.
When the review was over, the Emperor returned to his closet, and applied himself immediately to business. His situation rendered it necessary, that he should ascertain without delay the precise state of the country, of the government of which he had resumed the reins. This was so vast an undertaking, that the faculties of any other man would have been overwhelmed by it. He found the writing table covered with mystic authors[77]; and substituted for them plans and maps. "The closet of a French monarch," said he, "should resemble the tent of a general, not an oratory." His eyes rested on the map of France. After having contemplated its recent limits, he exclaimed in a tone of profound sorrow, "_Poor France_!" He kept silence a few minutes, and then began to hum in a low voice one of his usual burdens of songs:
"S'il est un tems pour la folie, Il en est un pour la raison[78]."
[Footnote 77: The king departed with such suddenness, that he had not time to carry away his private papers. In his writing table was found his family port-folio. It contained a great number of letters from Madame the Duchess of Angoulême, and from some of the princes. Napoleon cast his eye over several of them, and gave me the port-folio, with orders, that it should be scrupulously preserved. Napoleon would have respect paid to royal majesty, and to every thing that pertained to the person of kings.
The king habitually used a small table, that he had brought from Hartwell. Napoleon took pleasure in writing on it for a few hours: he afterwards ordered it to be removed, and the greatest care to be taken of it.
The Merlin's chair used by the king, not being suited to Napoleon, whose limbs and health were in full strength and vigour, was banished to the back closet. Some person being found sitting in it, when the Emperor passed through unexpectedly, he gave him an angry look, and the chair was removed.
One of his valets de chambre, thinking to please him, ventured to place over his mantel-piece some insulting caricatures of the Bourbons: these he disdainfully threw into the fire, and severely enjoined the valet, never in future to be guilty of such an impertinence.]