The guests were still at table, and the heated and energetic conversation that prevailed betrayed the violent and vindictive passions that then agitated each dweller of the South, where unhappily, for five centuries religious strife had long given increased bitterness to the violence of party feeling.

The emperor, now king of the petty Island of Elba, after having held sovereign sway over one-half of the world, counting as his subjects a small population of five or six thousand souls⁠—after having been accustomed to hear the “ Vive Napoléons ” of a hundred and twenty millions of human beings, uttered in ten different languages⁠—was looked upon here as a ruined man, separated forever from any fresh connection with France or claim to her throne.