The day of the battle of Nangis an Austrian officer came in the evening to headquarters, and had a long, secret conference with his Majesty.  Forty-eight hours after, at the close of the engagement at Mery, appeared a new envoy from the Prince von Schwarzenberg, with a reply from the Emperor of Austria to the confidential letter which his Majesty had written two days before to his father-in-law.  We had left Mery in flames; and in the little hammock of Chatres, where headquarters had been established, there could no shelter be found for his Majesty except in the shop of a wheelwright; and the Emperor passed the night there, working, or lying on the bed all dressed, without sleeping.  It was there also he received the Austrian envoy, the Prince of Lichtenstein.  The prince long remained in conversation with his Majesty; and though nothing was known of the subject of their conversation, no one doubted that it related to peace.  After the departure of the prince, the Emperor was in extraordinarily high spirits, which affected all those around him.

Our army had taken from the enemy thousands of prisoners; Paris had just received the Russian and Prussian banners taken at Nangis and Montereau; the Emperor had put to flight the foreign sovereigns, who even feared for a time that they might not be able to regain the frontiers; and the effect of so much success had been to restore to his Majesty his former confidence in his good fortune, though this was unfortunately only a dangerous illusion.

The Prince of Lichtenstein had hardly left headquarters when M. de Saint-Aignan, the brother-in-law of the Duke of Vicenza, and equerry of the Emperor, arrived.  M. de Saint-Aignan went, I think, to his brother-in-law, who was at the Congress of Chatillon, or at least had been; for the sessions of this congress had been suspended for several days.  It seems that before leaving Paris M. de Saint-Aignan held an interview with the Duke of Rovigo and another, minister, and they had given him a verbal message to the Emperor.  This mission was both delicate and difficult.  He would have much preferred that these gentlemen should have sent in writing the communications which they insisted he should bear to his Majesty, but they refused; and as a faithful servant M. de Saint-Aignan performed his duty, and prepared to speak the whole truth, whatever danger he might incur by so doing.

When he arrived at the wheelwright’s shop at Chatres, the Emperor, as we have just seen, was abandoning himself to most brilliant dreams; which circumstance was most unfortunate for M. de Saint-Aignan, since he was the bearer of disagreeable news.  He came, as we have learned since, to announce to his Majesty that he should not count upon the public mind at the capital, since they were murmuring at the prolongation of the war, and desired that the Emperor should seize the occasion of making peace.  It has even been stated that the word disaffection was uttered during