"Like you, I have been proscribed. Like you, I have wandered in foreign lands, breathing always wishes for my country. I know how irritable and sensitive one thus is, and how keenly one feels the attacks of his enemies. But upon my return I perceived that in exile we exaggerate the importance of such attacks. Let not the calumnies which reach you, after having traversed the seas, disturb for a moment your domestic happiness, and the calm of your situation. They are the last gusts of the tempest, the last noise of the expiring waves."
In a letter to Francis Leiber, dated July 1, 1829, Joseph writes:
Letter to Francis Leiber.
"Walter Scott wrote for the English Government, and from information furnished him by the Government which succeeded that of the Emperor Napoleon. Napoleon found France in delirium. He wished to rescue it from the anarchy of 1793, and from a counter-revolution. That he well understood the national will, his miraculous return from the isle of Elba will prove sufficiently to posterity. The English Cabinet always prevented the surrender of his dictatorship by perpetuating the war. Napoleon was thus under the necessity of assuming the forms of the other governments of Continental Europe, to reconcile them with France. All that which Napoleon did, his nobility (which was not feudal), his family relations, his Legion of Honor, his new realms, etc., he was under the necessity of doing. The English ever forced him to these acts, that he might put himself in apparent harmony with all those governments which he had conquered, and which he wished to withdraw from the seduction of England. Napoleon often said to me, 'Ten years more are necessary in order to give entire liberty. I can not do what I wish, but only what I can. These English compel me to live day by day.'"
As the tidings reached the ears of Joseph of the great Revolution of 1830 in France, in which the throne of Charles X. was demolished, he wrote to La Fayette under date of Sept. 7, 1830:
Letter to La Fayette.
"My dear General,—General Lallemand, who will hand you this letter, will recall me to your memory. He will tell you with what enthusiasm the population of this country, American and French, have received the news of the glorious events of which Paris has been the theatre. If I had not seen at the head of affairs a name[AG] with which mine can never be in accord, I should be with you immediately with General Lallemand. You will recall our interview in this hospitable and free land. My sentiments are as invariable as yours and those of my family. Every thing for the French people.
"Doubtless I can not forget that my nephew, Napoleon II.,[AH] was proclaimed by the Chamber which, in 1815, was dissolved by the bayonets of foreigners. Faithful to the motto of my family, Every thing by France and for France, I wish to discharge my duties to her. You know my opinions, long ago proclaimed. Individuals and families can have only duties to fulfill in their relation to nations. The nations have rights to exercise. If the French nation should call to the head of affairs the most obscure family, I think that we ought to submit to its will entirely. The nation alone has the right to destroy its work.
"I ask for the abolition of that tyrannic law which has shut out from France a family which had opened the kingdom to all those Frenchmen whom the Revolution had expelled. I protest against any election made by private corporations, or by bodies not having obtained from the nation the powers which the nation alone has the right to confer.