I digressed considerably, in the preceding chapter, from my recollections of Paris subsequent to our return from Germany after the battle of Leipzig, and the Emperor’s short sojourn at Mayence.  I cannot even now write the name of the latter town without recalling the spectacle of tumult and confusion which it presented after the glorious battle of Hanau, where the Bavarians fought so bravely on this the first occasion when they presented themselves as enemies before those in whose ranks they had so recently stood.  It was, if I am not mistaken, in this last engagement that the Bavarian general, Wrede, was, with his family, the immediate victims of their treachery.  The general, whom the Emperor had overwhelmed with kindness, was mortally wounded, all his relatives in the Bavarian army were slain, and his son-in-law, Prince of Oettingen, met the same fate.  It was one of those events which never failed to make a deep impression on the mind of his Majesty, since it strengthened his ideas of fatality.  It was also at Mayence that the Emperor gave orders for the assembling of the Corps Legislatif on the 2d of December.  The opening was delayed, as we shall see; and far better would it have been had it been indefinitely postponed; since in that case his Majesty would not have experienced the misfortunes he afterwards endured from their opposition, symptoms of which now manifested themselves for the first time in a manner which was, to say the least, intemperate.

One of the things which astonished me most at the time, and which still astonishes me when I recall it now, was the incredible activity of the Emperor, which, far from diminishing, seemed to increase each day, as if the very exercise of his strength redoubled it.  At the period of which I now speak, it is impossible to describe how completely every moment of his Majesty’s time was filled.  Since he had again met the Empress and his son, the Emperor had resumed his accustomed serenity; and I rarely surprised him in that open abandonment to dejection to which he sometimes gave way, in the retirement of his chamber, immediately after our return from Moscow.  He was occupied more ostensibly than usual in the numerous public works which were being prosecuted in Paris, and which formed a useful distraction to his engrossing thoughts of war and the distressing news which reached him from the army.  Almost every day, troops, equipped as if by magic, were reviewed by his Majesty, and ordered immediately to the Rhine, nearly the whole course of which was threatened; and the danger, which we then scarcely thought possible, must have appeared most imminent to the inhabitants of the capital, not infatuated, like ourselves, by the kind of charm the Emperor exercised over all those who had the honor of approaching his august person.  In fact, for the first time he was compelled to demand of the senate to anticipate the levy for the ensuing year, and each day also brought depressing news.  The prince arch-treasurer returned the following autumn, forced to quit Holland after the evacuation of this kingdom by our troops; whilst Marshal Gouvion Saint-Cyr was compelled at Dresden to sign a capitulation for himself and the thirty thousand men whom he had held in reserve at that place.