But for them, but for their bad conduct, their insatiable exactions, but for the humiliation that was felt at seeing foreign cannon planted in the streets of Paris, and beneath the very windows of the Palace, the days which followed the 8th of July might have been considered by the Royal Family as the season of a festival.  Every day people thronged to the garden of the Tuileries, and expressed their joy by singing and dancing under the King’s windows.

This ebullition of feeling might perhaps be thought absurd, but it at least bore evidence of the pleasure caused by the return of the Bourbons.

This manifestation of joy by numbers of persons of both sexes, most of them belonging to the better classes of society, displeased Fouche, and he determined to put a stop to it.  Wretches were hired to mingle with the crowd and sprinkle corrosive liquids on the dresses of the females some of them were even instructed to commit acts of indecency, so that all respectable persons were driven from the gardens through the fear of being injured or insulted:  As it was wished to create disturbance under the very eyes of the King, and to make him doubt the reality of the sentiments so openly expressed in his favour, the agents of the Police mingled the cry of “Vive l’Empereur!” with that of “Vive le Roi!” and it happened oftener than once that the most respectable persons were arrested and charged by Fouche’s infamous agents with having uttered seditious cries.  A friend of mine, whose Royalist opinions were well known, and whose father had been massacred during the Revolution, told me that while walking with two ladies he heard some individuals near him crying out “Vive l’Empereur!” This created a great disturbance.  The sentinel advanced to the spot, and those very individuals themselves had the audacity to charge my friend with being guilty of uttering the offensive cry.  In vain the bystanders asserted the falsehood of the accusation; he was seized and dragged to the guard-house, and after being detained for some hours he was liberated on the application of his friends.  By dint of such wretched manoeuvres Fouche triumphed.  He contrived to make it be believed that he was the only person capable of preventing the disorders of which he himself was the sole author:  He got the Police of the Tuileries under his control.  The singing and dancing ceased, and the Palace was the abode of dulness.

While the King was at St. Denis he restored to General Dessoles the command of the National Guard.  The General ordered the barriers to be immediately thrown open.  On the day of his arrival in Paris the King determined, as a principle, that the throne should be surrounded by a Privy Council, the members of which were to be the princes and persons whom his Majesty might appoint at a future period.  The King then named his new Ministry, which was thus composed: 

Prince Talleyrand, peer of France, President of the Council of Ministers, and Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.