Maria Louisa had played her rôle of Empress-regent as well as might be expected from a woman of twenty-three with slender abilities; only once in his letters did the Emperor chide her, and that was for a fault at that time venial in European royalty: receiving a high official, in this case the arch-chancellor, in her bedchamber. On the whole, she had been dignified and conciliatory; once she rose to a considerable height, pronouncing before the senate with great effect a stirring speech composed by her husband and forwarded from his headquarters. About her were grouped a motley council: Joseph, gentle but efficient; Savary, underhanded and unwarlike; Clarke, working in the war ministry like a machine; Talleyrand, secretly plotting against Napoleon, whose title of vice-grand elector he wore with outward suavity; Cambacérès, wise but unready; Montalivet, adroit but cautious. Yet, while there was no one combining ability, enthusiasm, and energy, the equipment of troops had gone on with great regularity, and each day regiments of half-drilled, half-equipped recruits had departed for the seat of war. The national guards who garrisoned the city, some twelve thousand in all, had forgotten their imperialism, having grown very sensitive to the shafts of royalist wit; yet they held their peace and had performed the round of their duties. Everything had outwardly been so quiet and regular that Napoleon actually contemplated a new levy, but the emptiness of the arsenals compelled him to dismiss the idea. Theoretically a fortified military depot, Paris was really an antiquated fortress with arsenals of useless weapons. Spasmodic efforts had been made to throw up redoubts before the walls, but they had failed from lack of energy in the military administration.
A close examination of what lay beneath the surface of Parisian society revealed much that was dangerous. Talleyrand's house was a nest of intrigue. Imperial prefects like Pasquier and Chabrol were calm but perfunctory. The Talleyrand circle grew larger and bolder every day. Moreover, it had influential members--de Pradt, Louis, Vitrolles, Royer-Collard, Lambrecht, Grégoire, and Garat, together with other high functionaries in all departments. Bourrienne developed great activity as an extortioner and briber; the great royalist irreconcilables, Montmorency, Noailles, Denfort, Fitz-James, and Montesquiou, were less and less careful to conceal their activity. Jaucourt, one of Joseph's chamberlains, was a spy carrying the latest news from headquarters to the plotters. "If the Emperor were killed," he wrote on March seventeenth, "we should then have the King of Rome and the regency of his mother.... The Emperor dead, we could appoint a council which would satisfy all opinions. Burn this letter." The program is clear when we recall that the little King of Rome was not three years old. Napoleon was well aware of the increasing chaos, and smartly reproved Savary from Rheims.