Accordingly, they invited the Senate at once to appoint a Provisional Government.  Talleyrand, as Grand Elector of the Empire, had the power to summon that guardian of the commonwealth, whose vote would clearly be far more expeditious than the plebiscite on which Alexander had previously set his heart.  Of the 140 Senators only 64 assembled, but over them Talleyrand’s influence was supreme.  He spake, and they silently registered his suggestions.  Thus it was that the august body, taught by ten years of despotism to bend gracefully before every breeze, fulfilled its last function in the Napoleonic regime by overthrowing the very constitution which it had been expressly charged to uphold.  The date was the 1st of April.  Talleyrand, Dalberg, Beurnonville, Jaucourt, and l’Abbe de Montesquiou at once formed a Provisional Government; but the soul of it was Talleyrand.  The Czar gave the word, and Talleyrand acted as scene-shifter.  The last tableau of this constitutional farce was reached on the following day, when the Senate and the Corps Legislatif declared that Napoleon had ceased to reign.

Such was the ex-bishop’s revenge for insults borne for many a year with courtly tact, but none the less bitterly felt.  Napoleon and he had come to regard each other with instinctive antipathy; but while the diplomatist hid his hatred under the cloak of irony, the soldier blurted forth his suspicions.  Before leaving Paris, the Emperor had wound up his last Council-meeting by a diatribe against enemies left in the citadel; and his words became all the hotter when he saw that Talleyrand, who was then quietly conversing with Joseph in a corner, took no notice of the outburst.  From Champagne he sent off an order to Savary to arrest the ex-Minister, but that functionary took upon himself to disregard the order.  Probably there was some understanding between them.  And thus, after steering past many a rock, the patient schemer at last helped Europe to shipwreck that mighty adventurer when but a league or two from port.

But all was not over yet.  Napoleon had fallen back on Fontainebleau, in front of which town he was assembling a force of nearly 60,000 men.  Marie Louise, with the Ministers, was at Blois, and desired to make her way to the side of her consort.  Had she done so, and had her father been present at Paris, a very interesting and delicate situation would have been the result; and we may fancy that it would have needed all Metternich’s finesse and Castlereagh’s common sense to keep the three monarchs united.  But Francis was still at Dijon; and Metternich and Castlereagh did not reach Paris until April 10th; so that everything in these important days was decided by the Czar and Talleyrand, both of them irreconcilable foes of Napoleon.  It was in vain that Caulaincourt (April 1st) begged the Czar to grant peace to Napoleon on the basis of the old frontiers.  “Peace with him would only be a truce,” was the reply.