Page:Coubertin - France since 1814, 1900.djvu/37

 In 1814 they went side by side, each acting in some sort as a check upon the other. But in 1815 the necessity of their union was less apparent. In short, Louis XVIII., though always respected as the original author of the Charter, was no longer the King, but a King, which for the future constituted a radical difference. The Restoration was found to be falsified in its principle of inviolable heredity. Between it and the ancient Monarchy there stood henceforth something more than the great drama of the Revolution and the Empire — there was the brief episode of the Hundred Days. It had suftered more in three months than in five-and-twenty years.

Moreover, difficulties had increased a hundredfold. First there was the presence of the foreign armies ; in Paris alone their maintenance cost 600,000 francs a day, and three-fourths of France was occupied The Russians abandoned themselves to pillage. The Prussians passed their recjuisitions without mercy — and no wonder, when we know in what state of mind they began the campaign. M. Henri Houssaye has given us some typical