Sir Neil Campbell found it more and more difficult to obtain access to the presence of Buonaparte—­which the refusal of the English government to acknowledge the Imperial title, and this officer’s consequent want of any very definite character at Elba, left him no better means of overcoming than to undertake journeys and voyages, thereby gaining a pretext for paying his respects at every departure and return.  Sir Neil early suspected that some evil was hatching, and repeatedly remarked on the absurdity of withholding Napoleon’s pension, thereby tempting him, as it were, to violence.  But neither the reports nor the reclamations of this gentleman appear to have received that attention which they merited.

What persons in France were actually in communication on political subjects with the turbulent court of Elba, during that autumn and the following winter, is likely to remain a secret:  that they were neither few nor inactive, nor unskilful, the event will sufficiently prove.  The chiefs of the police and of the post-office had been removed by Louis; but the whole inferior machinery of these establishments remained untouched; and it is generally believed, that both were early and sedulously employed in the service of the new conspiracy.  We have seen that Soult was commander-in-chief of the army; and it is very difficult, on considering the subsequent course of events, to doubt that he also made a systematic use of his authority with the same views, distributing and arranging the troops according to far other rules than the interests of his royal master.

Ere the autumn closed, Buonaparte granted furloughs on various pretexts to about 200 of his guardsmen; and these were forthwith scattered over France, actively disseminating the praises of their chief, and, though probably not aware how soon such an attempt was meditated, preparing the minds of their ancient comrades for considering it as by no means unlikely that he would yet once more appear in the midst of them.  It is certain that a notion soon prevailed that Napoleon would revisit the soil of France in the spring of the coming year.  He was toasted among the soldiery, and elsewhere also, under the soubriquet of Corporal Violet.  That early flower, or a ribbon of its colour, was the symbol of rebellion, and worn openly, in the sight of the unsuspecting Bourbons.

Their security was as profound as hollow; nor was it confined to them.  The representatives of all the European princes had met in Vienna, to settle finally a number of questions left undecided at the termination of the war.  Talleyrand was there for France, and Wellington for England; and yet it is on all hands admitted, that no surprise was ever more sudden, complete, and universal than theirs, when on the 11th of March, 1815, a courier arrived among them with the intelligence that Napoleon Buonaparte had reared his standard in Provence.[68]

[Footnote 67:  When the King first came to Paris, there appeared a caricature representing an eagle flying away from the Tuileries, and a brood of porkers entering the gate; and His Majesty was commonly called by the rabble, not Louis dix huit, but Louis Cochon (the pig), or Louis des huitres (of the oysters).]