Napoleon at the same time endeavoured to make himself popular with the common people—­the, mob of the Faubourg St. Antoine and other obscure quarters of Paris.  On the first evening of his return, as he walked round the glittering circle met to welcome him, in the State apartments of the Tuileries, he kept repeating, “Gentlemen, it is to the poor and disinterested mass of the people that I owe everything; it is they who have brought me back to the capita.  It is the poor subaltern officers and common soldiers that have done all this.  I owe everything to the common people and the ranks of the army.  Remember that!  I owe everything to the army and the people!” Some time after he took occasional rides through the Faubourg St. Antoine, but the demonstrations of the mob gave him little pleasure, and, it was easy to detect a sneer in his addresses to them.  He had some slight intercourse with the men of the Revolution—­the fierce, bloodthirsty Jacobins—­but even now he could not conceal his abhorrence of them, and, be it said to his honour, he had as little to do with them as possible.

When Napoleon, departed for the summer campaign he took care beforehand to leave large sums of money for the ‘federes’; in the hands of the devoted Real; under whose management the mob was placed.  These sums were to be distributed at appropriate seasons, to make the people cry in the streets of Paris, “Napoleon or death.”  He also left in the hands of Davoust a written authority for the publication of his bulletins, many clauses of which were written long before the battles were fought that they were to describe.  He gave to the same Marshal a plan of his campaign, which he had arranged for the defensive.  This was not confided to him without an injunction of the strictest secrecy, but it is said that Davoust communicated the plan to Fouche.  Considering Davoust’s character this is very unlikely, but if so, it is far from improbable that Fouche communicated the plan to the Allies with whom, and more particularly with Prince Metternich, he is well known to have been corresponding at the time.

Shortly after the Emperor’s arrival in Paris Benjamin Constant, a moderate and candid man, was deputed by the constitutional party to ascertain Napoleon’s sentiments and intentions.  Constant was a lover of constitutional liberty, and an old opponent of Napoleon, whose headlong career of despotism, cut out by the sword, he had vainly endeavoured to check by the eloquence of his pen.

The interview took place at the Tuileries.  The Emperor, as was his wont, began the conversation, and kept it nearly all to himself during the rest of the audience.  He did not affect to disguise either his past actions or present dispositions.