Two days after the receipt of my letter my wife was awoke very early in the morning to be informed of our arrival in France.  The courier who brought this intelligence was the bearer of a second letter from me, which I had written on board ship, and dated from Frejus.  In this letter I mentioned that Bonaparte would pass through Seas and dine with my mother.

In fulfilment of my directions Madame de Bourrienne set off for Paris at five in the morning.  Having passed the first post-house she met a Berlin containing four travellers, among whom she recognised Louis Bonaparte going to meet the General on the Lyons road.  On seeing Madame de Bourrienne Louis desired the postillion to stop, and asked her whether she had heard from me.  She informed him that we should pass through Sens, where the General wished to dine with my mother, who had made every preparation for receiving him.  Louis then continued his journey.  About nine o’clock my wife met another Berlin, in which were Madame Bonaparte and her daughter.  As they were asleep, and both carriages were driving at a very rapid rate, Madame de Bourrienne did not stop them.  Josephine followed the route taken by Louis.  Both missed the General, who changed his mind at Lyons, and proceeded by way of Bourbonnais.  He arrived fifteen hours after my wife; and those who had taken the Burgundy road proceeded to Lyons uselessly.

Determined to repair in all haste to Paris, Bonaparte had left Frejus on the afternoon of the day of our landing.  He himself had despatched the courier to Sens to inform my mother of his intended visit to her; and it was not until he got to Lyons that he determined to take the Bourbonnais road.  His reason for doing so will presently be seen.  All along the road, at Aix, at Lyons, in every town and village, he was received, as at Frejus, with the most rapturous demonstrations of joy.

—­[From Frejus to, Aix a crowd of men kindly escorted us, carrying torches alongside the carriage of the General, not so much to show their enthusiasm as to ensure our safety (Bourrienne) These brigands became so bad in France that at one time soldiers were placed in the imperials of all the diligences, receiving from the wits the curiously anticipative name of “imperial armies".]—­

Only those who witnessed his triumphal journey can form any notion of it; and it required no great discernment to foresee something like the 18th Brumaire.

The provinces, a prey to anarchy and civil war, were continually threatened with foreign invasion.  Almost all the south presented the melancholy spectacle of one-vast arena of conflicting factions.  The nation groaned beneath the yoke of tyrannical laws; despotism was systematically established; the law of hostages struck a blow at personal liberty, and forced loans menaced every man’s property.  The generality of the citizens had declared themselves against a pentarchy devoid of power, justice, and morality, and which had become the sport of faction and intrigue.  Disorder was general; but in the provinces abuses were felt more sensibly than elsewhere.  In great cities it was found more easy to elude the hand of despotism and oppression.