extended, like those of an immense net, over the whole kingdom of France, and the cord for drawing it was in the hands of Buonaparte. Paris was, of course, the centrical point from which the subordinate agents received their secret instructions; committees of the disaffected were established in the different quarters of the city. The most active members were women, who, having held rank at the court of Buonaparte, had been repulsed or treated with neglect at that of Louis. They were, in general, the wives of Buonaparte's generals and nobles and statesmen, to whom the aristocratic pride of the court-ladies denied the honours of the drawing-room. It is astonishing how much the passions of female emulation and revenge influenced the feelings of their relations, and influenced a grand national catastrophe. A quarrel betwixt two ladies of Queen Anne's household occasioned the peace of Utretcht; and the aristocratic state maintained by the female attendants of the Duchess d'Angouleme, had some share in bringing on the battle of Waterloo. One remarkable agent and victim of the short-lived revolution acknowledged how much he was influenced by such considerations. "I shall no longer," said Ney, when he deserted the cause of his sovereign for that of Buonaparte, see my wife return from the Tuilleries in tears, on account of the neglect with which she has been treated;" and many, besides the Marechal, felt, though they might not acknowledge, the impulse they received from these womanish grievances. Offended pride hesitates at no measures for gratifying vengeance. Besides the purses of their husbands, or lovers, which, of course, they commanded, many of these female intriguers devoted their jewels to the cause of revolution, and the sale produced considerable sums. The chief of these

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female conspirators was Hortensia Beauharnois, daughter of Josephine, and wife of Louis Buonaparte, whom his brother created King of Holland, and afterwards deposed. To this person, at once his step-daughter and sister-in-law, Buonaparte was so tenderly attached as to give room for scandal, notwithstanding the propinquity of this double connection. She had been created by Louis, Duchess of St Leu, at the request, it was believed, of the Emperor Alexander, who had magnanimously extended his protection to several of the fallen house of Buonaparte. At Nanterre, Neuilly, and St Leu, meetings of the principal conspirators were held; and her confidential friend, Madame Hamelin, is said to have assisted in concealing the agents whom Buonaparte sent from Elba. The Duchess of

Bassano, wife of that Maret, Duke of Bassano, who was considered for some time as Buonaparte's favourite counsellor; with the Duchess of Montebello, (wife of Marechal Lanne,) and other ladies, whose rank at the royal court was inferior to that which they had held at the emperor's, were engaged in the plot. Seductions of every species were used to draw the discontented within the vortex of conspiracy; nor was it safe to become possessed of the secret without joining their measures. It is said that such a confidence was fatal to General Quesnel, who, having repulsed with indignation the treasonable proposals made to him at one of these societies, was soon afterwards assassi nated and flung into the Seine.

At the meetings held in the houses of these intriguing females, the whole artillery of conspiracy was forged and put in order, from the political lie, which does its work if believed but for an hour, to the political song or squib, which, like the fire-work from which it derives its name, expresses

love of frolic or.of mischief, according to the nature of the materials amongst which it is thrown. From these places of rendezvous the agents of the plot sallied out upon their respective rounds, furnished with every lure that could rouse the suspicious landholder, attract the idle Farisian, seduce the Ideologue, who longed to try the experiments of his Utopian theories upon real government, and above all, secure the military, from the officer, before whose eyes truncheons, coronets, and even crowns, were disposed in ideal prospect, to the grenadier, whose hopes only aimed at blood, brandy, and free quarters. The lower orders of the populace, particularly those inhabiting the two great suburbs of Saint Marçeau and Saint Antoine, were disposed to the cause from their natural restlessness and desire of change; from the apprehension that the king would discontinue the expensive buildings in which Buonaparte was wont to employ them; from a jacobinical dislike to the lawful title of Louis, joined to some tender aspirations after the happy days of liberty and equality; and lastly, from the disposition which the lees of society every where manifest to get rid of the law, their natural curb and enemy. The influence of Richard Lenoir was particularly useful to the conspirators. He was a wealthy cotton-manufacturer, who combined and disciplined no less than three thousand workmen in his employment, so as to be ready at the first signal of the conspirators. Le Noir was called by the royalists Santerre the Second; being said to aspire, like that celebrated suburbian brewer, to become a general of Sans Culottes. He was bound to Buonaparte's interest by his daughter having married General Lefebre Desnouettes, who was not the less the favourite of Napoleon that he had

broken his parole, and fled from England when a prisoner of war. Thus agitated like a lake by a subterranean earthquake, revolutionary movements began to shew themselves amongst the populace. At times, under pretence of scarcity of bread or employment, tumultuous groups assembled on the terrace of the Tuilleries, with clamours which reminded the Duchess D'Angouleme of those which preceded the imprisonment and death of her parents. The police dispersed them for the moment; but, if any arrests were made, it was only of such wretches as shouted when they heard others shout, and no efforts were made to ascertain the real cause of symptoms so alarming.

The police of Paris was at this time under the direction of Mons. D'André, formerly a financier. His loyalty does not seem to have been doubted, but his prudence and activity are very questionable; nor does he seem ever to have been completely master either of the duties of his office, or the tools by which it was to be performed. These tools, in other words, the subordinate agents and officers and clerks, the whole machinery as it were of the police, had remained unchanged since that dreadful power was administered by Savary, Buonaparte's head spy and confidential kidnapper. This body, as well as the army, felt that their honourable occupation was declined in emolument and importance since the fall of Buonaparte, and looked back with regret to the days when they were employed in agencies, dark, secret, and well-recompensed, unknown to a peaceful and constitutional administration. Like evil spirits employed by the spells of a benevolent enchanter, these police-officers seem to have served the king grudgingly and unwillingly; to have neglected their duty, when that could be done with impu

nity; and to have shewn that they had lost their activity and omniscience, so soon as embarked in the service of legitimate monarchy.

Under the connivance, therefore, if not with the approbation of the police, conspiracy assumed a more open and daring aspect Several houses of dubious fame, but especially the Caffé Montanssier, in the Palais Royale, were chosen as places of rendezvous for the subordinate satellites of the cause, where the toasts given, the songs sung, the tunes performed, and the language held, all bore allusion to Buonaparte's glories, his regretted absence, and his desired return. To express their hopes that this event would take place in the spring, the conspirators adopted for their symbol the violet; and afterwards applied to Buonaparte him self the name of Corporal Violet. The flower and the colour were publicly worn as a party distinction, before it would seem the court had taken the least alarm; and the health of Buonaparte, under the name of Corporal Violet, or Jean d'Epée, was pledged by many a royalist without suspicion of the concealed meaning.

Paris was the centre of the conspiracy, but its ramifications extended through France. Clubs were formed in the chief provincial towns. Regular correspondences were established between them and the capital; an intercourse much favoured, it has been asserted, by Lavallette, who, having been long director-general of the posts under Buonaparte, retained considerable influence over the subordinate agents of that department, none of whom had been displaced upon the king's return. It appears from the evidence of Mons. Ferrand, directorgeneral under the king, that the couriers, who, like the soldiers and po

lice-officers, had found more advantage under the imperial than under the royal government, were several of them in the interest of their old master. And it is averred, that the correspondence relating to the conspiracy was carried on through the royal post-office, contained in letters sealed with the king's seal, and dispatched by public messengers wearing his livery.

Such open demonstrations of treasonable practices did not escape the observation of the royalists, and they appear to have been communicated to the ministers from different quarters. But each of these official personages seems scrupulously to have entrenched himself within the routine of his own particular department, so that what was only of general import to the whole, was not considered as the business of any one in particular. Thus, when the stunning catastrophe had happened, each endeavoured to shift the blame from himself, like the domestics in a large and ill-regulated family; and although all acknowledged that gross negligence had existed elsewhere, no one admitted that the fault lay with himself. This general infatuation surprises us upon retrospect; but Heaven, who frequently punishes mankind by the indulgence of their own foolish or wicked desires, had decreed that peace was to be restored to Europe by the extermination of that army to whom peace was a state so odious; and for that purpose it was necessary that they should be successful in their desperate attempt to dethrone their peaceful and constitutional sovereign, and to reinstate the despot who was soon to lead them to the completion of their destiny, and, it may be pre sumed, of his own.

land of Elba received orders to embark. That the imprudence of the treaty of Fontainbleau might be complete, the mimic emperor had been left in possession of a small flotilla that he might have another chance of becoming master of a real one. The vessels were, a brig called the Inconstant, some zebecks and row-boats, in all seven transports, on board of which nine hundred soldiers were embarked. The final resolution was kept so secret, that even Bertrand was a stranger to it until an hour before its being carried into execution. The officers were most of them engaged at a ball given by Pauline Borghese, the sister of Buonaparte, and only left it to go on board the little squadron. The general officers who attended Buonaparte, were Bertrand, Drouet, and Cambronne, together with the director of the mines, Monsieur Porrs de Cette, who had contributed largely to the expence of the expedition. A procla mation from General Lapi, calling himself governor of the island of Elba, first announced to the inhabitants that their temporary emperor was recalled by Providence to a wider career of glory.

Sir Niel Campbell, appointed by the British government to reside in the isle of Elba at the court of Buonaparte, was absent on a short expedition to the coast of Italy, a circumstance which doubtless had some share ia determining the moment of the embarkation; for although the British officer had neither the authority nor the efficient means to prevent Buonaparte and his guards from going whenever they thought fit, yet his absence might be represented as a connivance on the part of England at the step which the ex-emperor of France had adopted, and no means of delusion were now to be omitted. When, on its return, the English sloop of war Partridge, in which Sir Niel

Campbell was, approached the isle, the appearance of the national guard on the batteries, instead of the hel metted grenadiers of the imperial guard, at once apprised the British resident of what had happened. When he landed, he found the mother and sister of Buonaparte in a well-painted agony of anxiety about the fate of their emperor, of whom they affected to know nothing, except that he had steered towards the coast of Barbary. They appeared extremely desirous to detain Sir Niel Campbell on shore. Resisting their entreaties, and repelling the more pressing arguments of the governor, who seemed somewhat disposed to use force to prevent him from reimbarking, Sir Niel Campbell regained his vessel, and set sail in pursuit of the adventurer. But it was too late; they only attained a distant sight of the flotilla, after Buonaparte and his forces had landed.

In their passage the adventurers made a narrow escape, as they fell in with a royal French frigate. The soldiers on board of the Inconstant were commanded to put off their caps and lie down upon the deck, while the captain of the brig exchanged some questions of ordinary civility with the captain of the frigate, to whom he chanced to be known. This done, each vessel followed her own course, and Buonaparte, on the 1st of March, found himself once more on the coast of France, off Frejus, in the gulf of St Juan. Here, in token of his resumed pretensions to the throne of France, he caused his attendants and soldiers assume the tri-coloured cockade, and throw into the sea those which they had worn in Elba. This was done with shouts of Vive l'Empereur ; and under these colours and auspices they commenced their disembarkation.

It seemed essential to the success of an enterprise, which rested entirely