The prefect had taken flight. The Emperor asked me his name. It was one Germain, whom he had made a count, and a gentleman of the bedchamber, without well knowing why. "What!" said he to me, "does that little Germain fancy it necessary to shun me? he must be brought back:" and he thought no more of him.
He directed me, to cause an account of the events at Grenoble and Lyons to be inserted in the newspaper of the department. The editor, a furious royalist, had hidden himself. I entrusted to the new subprefect the business of fulfilling the Emperor's orders; but, whether it were carelessness or incapacity on his part, he had recourse to the printer of the paper, who supplied him with an article far from answering our views.
It began with a very just, but ill-timed eulogy of the goodness of Louis XVIII.; and ended with declaring in substance, that so good a king was not fitted to reign over the French, and that they required a sovereign such as Napoleon, &c.
The Emperor, who would read every thing, asked me for the paper. I pretended I could not lay my hand upon it: but, after a thousand attempts to put him off from seeing it, I was at length obliged to bring it him. I thought he would have given me a severe reprimand, but he contented himself with saying: "Change that man, he is a fool; and desire him for the future, never to attempt a eulogy of me." I sent for him, scolded him, and, like me, he was let off for the fright.
It was at Macon, that we first received official news of what was going on at Paris. It was brought us by M. ***. The unskilful manner in which the royalist party superintended the police of the roads, was truly astonishing. Not one of its emissaries escaped us, while ours went and came without any obstruction. Rage or fear must have turned the brains of all the royalists. M. *** assured the Emperor, that the national guard appeared determined to defend the king, and that the king had declared, he would not quit the Tuileries. "If he choose to wait for me there," said Napoleon, "I have no objection: but I doubt it much. He suffers himself to be lulled by the boastings of the emigrants; and when I get within twenty leagues of Paris, they will abandon him, as the nobles of Lyons abandoned the Count d'Artois. What indeed could he do with the old puppets that are about him? One of our grenadiers would knock down a hundred of them with the butt-end of his musket.... The national guard shouts at a distance; when I am at the barriers it will be silent. Its business is not to raise a civil war, but to maintain peace and order in the country. The majority is sound; there is nothing rotten in it but a few officers; and them I will expel. Return to Paris; tell my friends not to implicate themselves, and within ten days my grenadiers will mount guard at the Tuileries: go."