Still an obscurity of another kind envelopes me in London. My political position casts into shade my literary fame: not a fool in the three kingdoms but prefers the ambassador of Louis XVIII. to the author of the Génie du Christianisme. I shall see how the matter turns after my death, or when I shall have ceased to fill M. le Duc Decazes'[435] place at the Court of George IV.[436], a succession as incongruous as the rest of my life.
Now that I have arrived in London as French Ambassador, one of my chief pleasures is to leave my carriage at the corner of some square, and on foot to traverse the back-streets which I frequented in former days, the cheap popular suburbs, where misfortune takes refuge under the protection of a kindred suffering, the nameless shelters which I haunted with my companions in distress, not knowing whether I should have bread to eat on the morrow, I whose table today is covered with three or four courses. At all those narrow and necessitous doors which were once open to me, I see none but strange faces. I no longer meet my fellow-countrymen roaming, recognizable by their gestures, their gait, the shape and age of their clothes. I no longer perceive those martyred priests, wearing the clerical collar, the big three-cornered hat, the long, black, threadbare frock, whom the English used to salute as they passed. Wide streets, lined with palaces, have been cut, bridges built, walks planted with trees: Regent's Park, near Portland Place, occupies the space of the old meadows filled with herds of cows. A cemetery which formed the prospect from the dormer-window of one of my attics has disappeared within the circumference of a factory. When I call upon Lord Liverpool[437], I find it difficult to pick out the spot where stood the scaffold of Charles I.; new buildings, closing in upon the statue of Charles II.[438], have come forward, with forgetfulness, to cover up memorable events.
And as an emigrant.
How much do I regret, in the midst of my insipid grandeur, that world of tribulations and tears, those times in which I mingled my sorrows with those of a colony of unfortunates! It is true, then, that all changes, that misfortune itself comes to an end, like prosperity! What has become of my brothers in emigration? Some are dead, others have undergone various destinies: they have, like me, beheld the loss of their kinsmen and friends; they are less happy in the land of their birth than they were on foreign soil. Had we not on that soil our meetings, our amusements, our merry-makings, and, above all, our youth? Mothers of families and young girls commencing life in adversity brought the weekly fruit of their toil, to revel in some dance of their country. Attachments were formed in the course of the evening chit-chat after work, on the grass at Hampstead or Primrose Hill. In chapels adorned with our own hands, in old tumble-down buildings, we prayed on the 21st of January and on the anniversary of the Queen's death[439], and were much moved by a funeral oration pronounced by the emigrant curate of our village. We strolled beside the Thames, now to see the vessels laden with the world's riches entering dock, and again to admire the country-houses at Richmond, we so poor, we who had lost the shelter of the paternal roof-tree: all these things constitute true happiness!
When I come home in 1822, instead of being received by my friend, shivering with cold, who opens the door of our garret to me, calls me "thee" and "thou," sleeps on a pallet beside mine, covering himself with his thin coat and having the moonlight for a lamp, I pass by the light of candles between two rows of lackeys, ending in half-a-dozen respectful secretaries. Overwhelmed along my road with the words, "Monseigneur, my Lord, your Excellency, Monsieur l'Ambassadeur," I come to a drawing-room upholstered in silk and gold.
"I beg you, gentlemen, to leave me! A truce to these my lords! What use do you think I have for you? Go and laugh in the chancelleries as though I were not here. Do you imagine you will make me take this masquerade seriously? Do you think me fool enough to believe that I have changed my nature by changing my coat? The Marquess of Londonderry is coming, you say[440]; the Duke of Wellington[441] has asked for me; Mr. Canning[442] is looking for me; Lady Jersey[443] expects me to dinner, to meet Mr. Brougham[444]; Lady Gwydyr[445] hopes to see me at ten o'clock in her box at the Opera; Lady Mansfield[446] at midnight at Almack's[447]?"
Mercy! Where can I hide? Who will deliver me? Who will save me from this persecution? Return to me, fair days of misery and loneliness! Come back to life, companions of my exile! Come, old comrades of the pallet and the camp-bed, let us go into the country, into the little garden of some despised tavern, and drink a cup of bad tea on a wooden bench, while we talk of our mad hopes and our ungrateful country, discuss our troubles, and seek means to assist each other or to succour one of our kinsmen in yet worse plight than ourselves!
Kensington Gardens.
That is how I feel, that is how I speak to myself in these first days of my embassy in London. I escape from the melancholy which besets me beneath my roof only by saturating myself with a less weighty melancholy in Kensington Gardens. These gardens, at least, have not changed; the trees alone have grown taller; in them, ever solitary, the birds build their nests in peace. It is no longer even the fashion to meet there, as in the days when the loveliest of Frenchwomen, Madame Récamier[448], used to walk there followed by the crowd. From the edge of the deserted lawns of Kensington, I love to watch, across Hyde Park, the crowd of horses, the carriages of the fashionable world, among which figures my empty tilbury; while I, once more a poor little emigrant noble, walk along the path in which the exiled confessor was wont to say his breviary.