This I was not able to do until long tossing on the thorns of chagrin wore me out. I was ashamed like a prodigal, baffled, and hurt to the bruising of my soul. A young man's chastened confidence in himself is hard to bear, but the loss of what was given as a heritage at birth is an injustice not to be endured.
The throne of France was never my goal, to be reached through blood and revolution. Perhaps the democratic notions in my father's breast have found wider scope in mine. I wanted to influence men, and felt even at that time that I could do it; but being king was less to my mind than being acknowledged dauphin, and brother, and named with my real name.
I took my fists in my hands and swore to force recognition, if I battered a lifetime on Mittau.
At daylight our post-horses were put to the chaise and I gave the postilion orders myself. The little fellow bowed himself nearly double, and said that troops were moving behind us to join the allied forces against Napoleon.
At once the prospect of being snared among armies and cut off from all return to Paris, appalled me as a greater present calamity than being cast out of Mittau. Mittau could wait for another expedition.
"Very well," I said. "Take the road to France."
We met August rains. We were bogged. A bridge broke under us. We dodged Austrian troops. It seemed even then a fated thing that a Frenchman should retreat ignominiously from Russia.
There is a devilish antagonism of inanimate and senseless things, begun by discord in ourselves, which works unreasonable torture. Our return was an abominable journal which I will not recount, and going with it was a mortifying facility for drawing opposing forces.
However, I knew my friend the marquis expected me to return defeated. He gave me my opportunity as a child is indulged with a dangerous plaything, to teach it caution.
He would be in his chateau of Plessy, cutting off two days' posting to Paris. And after the first sharp pangs of chagrin and shame at losing the fortune he had placed in my hands, I looked forward with impatience to our meeting.