JOSEPH FOURIER. 169 



a man assumed the tricolor cockade, substituted for tbe white flag; the 

 eai^le — witness of twenty battles — which it had preserved, and departed 

 with shouts of Vive VEmpereur ! After such a commencement, to 

 attempt to hold the country would have been an act of folly. General 

 Marchand caused accordingly the gates of the city to be shut. lie still 

 hoped, notwithstanding the evidently hostile disposition of the inhab- 

 itants, to sustain a siege with the sole assistance of the third regiment 

 of engineers, the fourth regiment of artillery, and some weak detach- 

 ments of infantry which had not abandoned him. 



From that moment, the civil authority had disappeared. Fourier 

 thought then that he might quit Grenoble, and repair to Lyons, where 

 the princes had assembled together. At the second restoration, this 

 departure was imputed to him as a crime. He was very near being 

 brought before a court of assizes, or even a provost's court. Certain 

 personages pretended that the presence of the prefect of the chief place 

 of risere might have conjured the storm ; that the resistance might have 

 been more animated, better arranged. People forgot that nowhere, and 

 at Grenoble even less than anywhere else, was it possil)le to organize 

 even a pretext of resistance. Let us see then, finally, how this martial 

 city — the fall of which Fourier might have prevented by his mere pres- 

 ence — let us see how it was taken. * It is eight o'clock in the evening. 

 The inhabitants and the soldiers garrison the ramparts. Napoleon pre- 

 cedes his little troop by some steps 5 he advances even to the gate; he 

 knocks, (be not alarmed, gentlemen, it is not a battle which I am about 

 to describe,) he Icnoclcs with his snuff-box ! " Who is there ? " cried the officer 

 of the guard. " It is the Emperor ! Open!" " Sire, my duty forbids 

 me." " Open, I tell you ; I have no time to lose." " But, sire, even 

 thougli I should open to you, I could not. The keys are in the posses- 

 sion of General Marchand." "Go, then, and fetch them." " I am cer- 

 tain that he will refuse them to me." "If the general refuse them, tell 

 Mm that I icill dismiss him.'''' 



These words petrified the soldiers. During the previous two days, 

 hundreds of proclamations designated Bonaparte as a wild beast which 

 it was necessary to seize without scruple ; they ordered everybody to run 

 away from him, and yet this man threatened the general with depriva- 

 tion of his command ! The single Avord dismissal effaced the faint line of 

 demarkation which separated for an instant the old soldiers from the 

 young recruits ; one word established the whole garrison in the interest 

 of the Emperor. 



The circumstances of the capture of Grenoble were not yet known 

 when Fourier arrived at Lyons. He brought thither the news of the 

 rapid advance of Xapoleon ; that of the revolt of two com])anies of saj »pers, 

 of a regiment of infantry, and of the regiment commanded by Labe- 

 doyere. Moreover, he was a witness of the lively sympathy which the 

 country people along the whole route displayed in favor of the pro- 

 scribed exile of Elba. 



