But the enthusiasm of the revolutionary period was long since gone by.  In vain did Napoleon send special agents through the departments, calling on Frenchmen of all classes to rise in arms for the protection of the soil.  Coldness, languor, distrust met them almost everywhere.  The numerical results even of the conscription-levy were far under what they should have been; and of those who did enrol themselves, multitudes daily deserted, and not a few took part with those royalist bands who were, as we have already seen, mustering and training zealously in almost every district that was either strong by nature, or remote from the great military establishments of Buonaparte.  Nay, even the Legislative Senate, so long the silent and submissive slaves of all his imperial mandates, now dared to testify some sympathy with the feelings of the people, whom, in theory at least, they were supposed to represent.  This was a novelty for which Napoleon had not been prepared, and he received it in a manner little likely to conciliate the attachment of wavering men.  They ventured to hint that ancient France would remain to him, even if he accepted the proposals of the Allies, and that Louis XIV., when he desired to rouse the French people in his behalf in a moment of somewhat similar disaster, had not disdained to detail openly the sincere efforts which he had made to obtain an honourable peace.  “Shame on you!” cried the Emperor, “Wellington has entered the south, the Russian menace the northern frontier, the Prussians, Austrians, and Bavarians, the eastern.  Shame!  Wellington is in France, and we have not risen en masse to drive him back!  All my Allies have deserted—­the Bavarian has betrayed me.  No peace till we have burned Munich!  I demand a levy of 300,000 men—­with this and what I already have, I shall see a million in arms.  I will form a camp of 100,000 at Bourdeaux; another at Mentz; a third at Lyons.  But I must have grown men—­these boys serve only to encumber the hospitals and the road-sides....  Abandon Holland! sooner yield it back to the sea!  Senators, an impulse must be given—­all must march—­you are fathers of families—­the heads of the nation—­you must set the example.  Peace!  I hear of nothing but peace when all around should echo to the cry of war.”  The senate, nevertheless, drew up and presented a report which renewed his wrath.  He reproached them openly with desiring to purchase inglorious ease for themselves at the expense of his honour. I am the state, said he, repeating a favourite expression:  What is the throne?—­a bit of wood gilded and covered with velvet—­I am the state—­I alone am here the representative of the people.  Even if I had done wrong you should not have reproached me in public—­people wash their dirty linen at home.  France has more need of me than I of France.