The Restoration ministry.
The Legislative Body, transformed into a Chamber of Deputies, and the House of Peers, composed of 154 members, appointed for life, and including over 60 senators, formed the two first Legislative Chambers. M. de Talleyrand, installed at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, left for the Congress of Vienna, the opening of which was fixed for the 3rd of November, in execution of Clause 32 of the Treaty of the 30th of May; M. de Jaucourt held the portfolio during an interim which lasted until the Battle of Waterloo. The Abbé de Montesquiou became Minister of the Interior, having M. Guizot[206] as his secretary-general; M. Malouet[207] entered the Admiralty: he died, and was succeeded by M. Beugnot[208]; General Dupont[209] obtained the War Office; he was replaced by Marshal Soult[210], who distinguished himself through the erection of the funeral monument at Quiberon; the Duc de Blacas[211] was Minister of the Royal Household; M. Anglès[212], Prefect of Police; Councillor Dambray[213], Minister of Justice; the Abbé Louis[214], Minister of Finance.
On the 21st of October, the Abbé de Montesquiou introduced the first law on the subject of the press; it submitted every writing of less than twenty pages of print to the censorship: M. Guizot worked out this first law of liberty.
Carnot[215] addressed a letter to the King; he admitted that the Bourbons "had been joyfully received;" but, taking no account of the shortness of the time, nor of all that the Charter granted, he gave haughty lessons together with risky advice: all this is worth nothing when one has to accept the rank of minister and the title of count of the Empire; it is not becoming to show one's self proud towards a weak and liberal Prince when one has been submissive towards a violent and despotic Prince, when, a worn-out machine of the Terror, one has found one's self unequal to the calculation of the proportions of Napoleonic warfare. I sent to the press, in reply, my Réflexions politiques[216]; they contain the substance of the Monarchie selon la Charte. M. Lainé[217], the President of the Chamber of Deputies, spoke of this work to the King with praise. The King always seemed charmed with the services which I had the happiness to render him; Heaven seemed to have thrown over my shoulders the mantle of herald of the Legitimacy: but the greater the success of the work, the less did its author please His Majesty. The Réflexions politiques divulged my Constitutional doctrines: the Court received an impression from them which my fidelity to the Bourbons has been unable to wipe out. Louis XVIII. used to say to his intimates:
"Beware of ever admitting a poet into your affairs: he will ruin all. Those people are good for nothing."
The Duchesse de Duras.
A powerful and lively friendship at that time filled my heart: the Duchesse de Duras[218] had imaginative powers, and even some of the facial expression of Madame de Staël: she has given a proof of her talent as an author in Ourika. On her return from the Emigration, she led a secluded life, for many years, in her Château d'Ussé, on the banks of the Loire, and I first heard speak of her in the beautiful gardens at Méréville, after having passed near her in London without meeting her. She came to Paris for the education of her charming daughters, Félicie[219] and Clara[220]. Relations of family, province, literary and political opinion opened the door of her company to me. Her warmth of soul, her nobility of character, her loftiness of mind, her generosity of sentiment made her a superior woman. At the commencement of the Restoration, she took me under her protection; for, in spite of all that I had done for the Legitimate Monarchy and the services which Louis XVIII. confessed that he had received from me, I had been placed so far on one side that I was thinking of retiring to Switzerland. Perhaps I should have done well: in those solitudes which Napoleon had intended for me as his ambassador to the mountains, might I not have been happier than in the Palace of the Tuileries? When I entered those halls on the return of the Legitimacy, they made upon me an impression almost as painful as on the day when I saw Bonaparte there prepared to kill the Duc d'Enghien. Madame de Duras spoke of me to M. de Blacas. He replied that I was quite free to go I where I would. Madame de Duras was so tempestuous, so courageous on behalf of her friends, that a vacant embassy was dug up, the Embassy to Sweden. Louis XVIII., already wearied of my noise, was happy to make a present of me to his good brother, King Bernadotte. Did the latter imagine that I was being sent to Stockholm to dethrone him? By the Lord, ye princes of the earth, I dethrone nobody; keep your crowns, if you can, and above all do not give them to me, for I "will none of them."
Madame de Duras, an excellent woman, who allowed me to call her my sister, and whom I had the happiness of seeing in Paris during many years, went to Nice to die[221]: one more wound re-opened. The Duchesse de Duras saw much of Madame de Staël. I cannot conceive how I did not come across Madame Récamier[222], who had returned from Italy to France; I should have greeted the succour which came in aid of my life. Already I no longer belonged to those mornings which console themselves; I was on the verge of those evening hours which stand in need of consolation.
*
On the 30th of December of the year 1814, the Legislative Chambers were prorogued to the 1st of May 1815, as though they had been convoked for the assembly of Bonaparte's champ-de-mai. On the 18th of January, the remains were exhumed of Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI. I was present at this exhumation in the cemetery[223] in which Fontaine[224] and Percier[225] have since, at the pious call of Madame la Dauphine, and in imitation of a sepulchral church at Rimini, raised what is perhaps the most remarkable monument in Paris. This cloister, formed of a concatenation of tombs, strikes the imagination and fills it with sadness. I have spoken, in Book IV. of these Memoirs, of the exhumations of 1815[226]. In the midst of the bones, I recognised the Queen's head by the smile which that head had given me at Versailles.