In reality it had been accepted by the majority of the population as a government of expediency, which would provisionally secure threatened interests, but whose duration was anything but certain.  It was too evident that the Empire was Napoleon, as the Consulate had been Bonaparte—­that everything rested on the head of one man.  If an infernal machine removed him, royalty would have a good opportunity.  His life was not the only stake; his luck itself was very hazardous.  Founded on victory, the Empire was condemned to be always victorious.  War could undo what war had done.  And this uneasiness is manifest in contemporary memoirs and correspondence.  More of the courtiers of the new regime than one imagines were as sceptical as Mme. Mere, economising her revenues and saying to her mocking daughters, “You will perhaps be very glad of them, some day!” In view of a possible catastrophe many of these kept open a door for retreat towards the Bourbons, and vaguely encouraged hopes of assistance that could only be depended on in case of their success, but which the royalists believed in as positive and immediate.  As to the disaster which might bring it about, they hoped for its early coming, and promised it to the impatient Chouans—­the disembarkation of an Anglo-Russian army—­the rising of the West—­the entrance of Louis XVIII into his good town of Paris—­and the return of the Corsican to his island!  Predictions that were not so wild after all.  Ten years later it was an accomplished fact in almost all its details.  And what are ten years in politics?  Frotte, Georges, Pichegru, d’Ache, would only have had to fold their arms.  They would have seen the Empire crumble by its own weight.

We made these reflections on returning to the chateau while looking at the terrace in the setting sun, at the peaceful winding of the Seine and the lovely autumn landscape that Mme. de Combray and d’Ache had so often looked at, at the same place and hour, little foreseeing the sad fate the future had in store for them.

The misfortunes of the unhappy woman—­the deplorable affair of Quesnay where the coach with state funds was attacked by Mme. Acquet’s men, for the profit of the royalist exchequer and of Le Chevalier; the assassination of d’Ache, sold to the imperial police by La Vaubadon, his mistress, and the cowardly Doulcet de Pontecoulant, who does not boast of it in his “Memoires,”—­have been the themes of several tales, romances and novels, wherein fancy plays too great a part, and whose misinformed authors, Hippolyte Bonnelier, Comtesse de Mirabeau, Chennevieres, etc., have taken great advantage of the liberty used in works of imagination.  There is only one reproach to be made—­that they did not have the genius of Balzac.  But we may criticise more severely the so-called historical writings about Mme. de Combray, her family and residences, and the Chateau of Tournebut which M. Homberg shows us flanked by four feudal towers, and which mm.  Le Prevost and Bourdon say was demolished in 1807.