five and twenty years of exile they had nothing remembered and nothing forgot.”  Of course the old nobility, who flocked back to France in the train of the allied armies, expected the restoration of their estates.  The king had got his own again,—­why should not they get back theirs?  And they imagined that France, which had been overswept by successive waves of revolution, could go back to what she had been under the old regime.  This was impossible.  The returned exiles had to submit to the confiscation of their estates, and receive in return all offices and employments in the gift of the Government.  The army which had conquered in a hundred battles, with its marshals, generals, and vieux moustaches, was not pleased to have young officers, chosen from the nobility, receive commissions and be charged with important commands.  On the other hand, the Holy Alliance expected that the king of France would join the despotic sovereigns of Russia, Austria, and Prussia in their crusade against liberal ideas in other countries.  Against these difficulties, and many more, Louis XVIII. had to contend.  He was an infirm man, physically incapable of exertion,—­a man who only wanted to be let alone, and to avoid by every means in his power the calamity of being again sent into exile.

He placed himself on the side of the stronger party,—­he took part with the bourgeoisie.  His aim, as he himself said, was to menager his throne.  He began his reign by having Fouche and Talleyrand, men of the Revolution and the Empire, deep in his councils, though he disliked both of them.  Early in his reign occurred what was called the White Terror, in the southern provinces, where the adherents of the white flag repeated on a small scale the barbarities of the Revolution.

The king was forced to put himself in opposition to the old nobles who had adhered to him in his exile.  They bitterly resented his defection.  They used to toast him as le roi-quand-meme, “the king in spite of everything.”  His own family held all the Bourbon traditions, and were opposed to him.  To them everything below the rank of a noble with sixteen quarterings was la canaille.

Louis XVIII.’s favorite minister was M. Decazes, a man who studied the interests of the bourgeoisie; and the royal family at last made the sovereign so uncomfortable by their disapproval of his policy that he sought repose in the society and intimacy (the connection is said to have been nothing more) of a Madame de Cayla, with whom he spent most of his leisure time.

Before the Revolution, Louis XVIII. had been known sometimes as the Comte de Provence, and sometimes as Monsieur.  Though physically an inert man, he was by no means intellectually stupid, for he could say very brilliant things from time to time, and was very proud of them; but he was wholly unfit to be at the helm of the ship of state in an unquiet sea.