An order of the King summoned me to Ghent. The Royal Volunteers and the Duc de Berry's little army had been disbanded at Béthune, in the middle of the mud and of the accidents of a military breaking-up: touching farewells had been exchanged. Two hundred men of the King's Household remained and were quartered at Alost; my two nephews, Louis and Christian de Chateaubriand, formed part of that corps.
I had been given a billet of which I did not avail myself; a baroness whose name I have forgotten came to see Madame de Chateaubriand at the inn and offered us an apartment in her house: she implored us with so good a grace!
"You must pay no attention," she said, "to anything my husband says: his head is a little... you understand? My daughter also is a trifle eccentric; she has terrible moments, poor child! But the rest of the time she is as gentle as a lamb. Alas, it is not she who causes me the greatest trouble, but my son Louis, the youngest of my children: without God's help, he will be worse than his father!"
Madame de Chateaubriand politely refused to go and live with such rational people.
The King, well-lodged, having his service and his guards, formed his council. The empire of that great monarch consisted of a house in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, which house was situated in a town which, although the birthplace of Charles V.[261], had been the chief town of a prefecture of Bonaparte's: those names comprise between them a goodly number of centuries and events.
And join his Ministry.
The Abbé de Montesquiou being in London, Louis XVIII. appointed me Minister of the Interior ad interim.[262] My correspondence with the "departments" did not give me much to do; I easily kept up my correspondence with the prefects, sub-prefects, mayors and deputy-mayors of our good towns, on the inner side of our frontiers; I did not repair the roads much, and I let the steeples tumble down; my budget hardly enriched me; I had no secret funds; only, by a crying abuse, I was a "pluralist:" I was still His Majesty's Minister Plenipotentiary to the King of Sweden, who, like his fellow-townsman Henry IV.[263], reigned by right of conquest, if not by right of birth. We discoursed round a table covered with a green cloth in the King's closet. M. de Lally-Tolendal, who was, I think, Minister of Public Instruction, delivered speeches even more voluminous and more inflated than his cheeks: he quoted his illustrious ancestors the Kings of Ireland and muddled up his father's[264] trial with those of Charles I. and Louis XVI. He refreshed himself in the evening, after the tears, the sweat and the words which he had shed at the council, with a lady who had come all the way from Paris out of enthusiasm for his genius; he virtuously strove to cure her, but his eloquence betrayed his virtue and drove the dart more deeply.
Madame la Duchesse de Duras had come to join M. le Duc de Duras among the exiles. I will speak no more ill of misfortune, because I have spent three months with that admirable woman, talking of all that upright minds and hearts can find in a conformity of tastes, ideas, principles and feelings. Madame de Duras was ambitious for me: she alone saw at once what I might be worth in political life; she always deplored the envy and short-sightedness which kept me removed from the King's counsels; but she even much more deplored the obstacles which my character placed in the way of my fortune: she scolded me, she wanted to correct me of my indifference, my candour, my ingenuousness, and to make me adopt habits of courtierism which she herself could not endure. Nothing, perhaps, leads to greater attachment and gratitude than to feel one's self under the patronage of a superior friendship which, by virtue of its ascendancy over society, passes off your defects as good qualities, your imperfections as an attraction. A man protects you through his worth, a woman through your worth: that is why, of those two empires, one is so hateful, the other so sweet.
Since I have lost that great-hearted person, gifted with a soul so noble, with an intelligence which combined something of the strength of the thought of Madame de Staël with the grace of the talent of Madame de La Fayette[265], I have never ceased, while mourning her, to reproach myself with any unevenness of temper with which I may sometimes have wounded hearts that were devoted to me. Let us keep a close watch upon our character! Let us remember that, with a profound attachment, we can nevertheless poison days which we would buy back again at the price of all our blood. When our friends have sunk into the grave, what means have we to repair our trespasses? Our useless regrets, our vain repentings, are those a remedy for the pain that we have given them? They would have preferred one smile from us during their life than all our tears after their death.