Some time before the performance of Christine, he had expressed his anxiety to be present, with his two young brothers, at the production of my second drama; but he was afraid permission would not be granted him. Why did the poor lad come to me to help him? He came to beg me to tell the Duc d'Orléans of my wish that his children should be present at the performance of my play. I was quite prepared, on my side, to make this request; and, the first time I saw His Highness, I ventured to do so. The prince "hummed and hawed" a little, to express his mistrust with regard to the morality of a play which had ever come under the ban of the Censorship; but I reassured him as best I could; and, after a little pressure, I obtained leave for the young princes to be present at the performance. I took good care to go to the library on the Thursday following, for I felt certain I should see the Duc de Chartres there, and he came, but he was accompanied by M. de Boismilon; however, he managed to pass by me and to say in a whisper—

"We are going! Thank you."

But I have promised to give an anecdote illustrative of the idleness of the Duc de Chartres—a fault they did their utmost to hide from his father; the prizes young princes are usually loaded with serving to divert his suspicions.

I will keep my promise.

In 1835 I took a journey to Italy with Jadin. Our intention was to travel as real tourists, on foot, on horses or mules, in carriages, corricolo or speronare or by boat; in short, just as we could. We decided to leave France by way of the Gulf of Genoa; consequently, at Hyères, we hired a sort of driver who, for a hundred francs, was to take us to Nice, skirting the shores of the Gulf of Jouan, which would enable us to stop for half a day. Jadin intended to make a drawing of the shore where Napoleon had landed in 1815, meaning to have it engraved later. The vetturino had stipulated, as his share of our bargain, to be allowed to add four persons to our number, on condition that they offered no opposition to a first halt of five or six hours at Cannes, and a second halt at Grasse. Among the travellers accompanying us was a young man of twenty-four or twenty-five, who was clad in a blue dress coat, nankeen trousers, coloured stockings and laced shoes. In my Impressions de voyage, I gave him the name of Chaix; in my Memoirs, I must give him his real name, which was Louët. For a day and a half, he never addressed a word to us; but our conversation appeared to interest him enormously; he smiled at our jokes and listened attentively to our much rarer serious remarks. At table, his place was always laid by ours and, at our first sleeping-place, he arranged not to be separated from us by anything more than a partition. When we reached the Gulf of Jouan, he stopped and, whilst Jadin made his drawing, I flung myself into the water for a bathe. Just as I was undressing, Louët came up to me and, speaking to me for the first time, asked permission to bathe with me. I did not at first detect the punctilious politeness with which the request was put, and laughingly replied that he was perfectly free to do whatever he liked. He thanked me for the permission and took the most rational and least eventful of baths I ever saw, in three and a half feet of water; then, when the drawing and bathing were finished, we climbed into our carriage and slept at Nice that same night. Three of our companions had already left us, one at the heights of Draguignan and the two others at Grasse. Louët alone remained faithful to us as far as Nice, which surprised me the more as I had heard him tell the others who had accompanied him to the carriage, just as he was parting from them, that he was on his way to Paris.

Now Louët must have given a very wide meaning to the proverb, "Every road leads to Rome," if he could persuade himself so far as to think that the road from Toulon to Nice would take him to Paris. This strange conduct on the part of our travelling-companion roused Jadin's curiosity and mine, but it was at length explained by a request the vetturino made on Louët's behalf, who dared not put it to us himself. Louët had really started from Toulon to go to Paris, but he had been so charmed with our fascinating conversation on the journey that, instead of travelling only as far as Luc and there leaving for Draguignan and Castellane, he had told the vetturino that, as he had never seen Nice, he would go on to that place. When he reached Nice, he asked through the vetturino whether, as a great favour, we would allow him to continue the journey with us; hastening to tell us that his society should cost us nothing, for he would pay a third of whatever our expenses amounted to; the vetturino added, by way of parenthesis, that Louët, whom he knew, had just come into a legacy of about thirty thousand francs and was returning to Paris with it when he fell in with us: after which he did not see how he could find a better way of spending a portion of his money than in our society. The request was proffered with such graceful entreaty and Louët seemed such a good sort of young fellow that we did not even think of discussing the question, but intimated that we should be delighted to have his company; that, as he proposed, the expenses should be divided into thirds, and the very next day we would tell him our plan of travel, so that he might then see if our itinerary suited him. He replied that we need not trouble to give him such a programme, that he had no settled aim—it was us and not the journey he wanted—that, since we had honoured him with leave to accompany us, he would go to China with us, or wherever we wished. Certainly no one could have been more accommodating and, indeed, Louët went the entire Italian journey with us and proved himself throughout an excellent travelling-companion. I related this story in my Impressions de voyage with the light gaiety of narrative that is natural to me, and in 1838 I had a visit from Jadin.

"You will never guess who is coming to see you to-morrow...?" he began.

"I cannot."

"Louët."

"Nonsense!"