I have told you that, at first, I had a sense of weariness, at the commencement of my second journey to Rome, and that I ended by recovering under the influence of the ruins and the sun. I was still under my first impression when, on the 3rd of November 1828, I wrote to M. Villemain:

"Your letter, monsieur, was very welcome in my Roman solitude: it has stayed my home-sickness, from which I was suffering badly. That complaint is nothing else than my years, which deprive my eyes of the power of seeing as they saw before: my own ruin is not great enough to find consolation in that of Rome. When I now wander alone amid all these remains of the centuries, they no longer serve me as a scale by which to measure time: I go back into the past, I see what I have lost and the end of the short future that lies before me; I count all the joys which I might have left, I find none of them; I make an effort to admire what I used to admire, and I admire it no longer. I come home to undergo my honours, overcome by the sirocco and stabbed by the tramontane. There you have all my life, save only a tomb which I have not yet had the courage to visit. We pay great attention to crumbling monuments: we keep them up; we rid them of their plants and flowers; the women whom I had left young have become old, and the ruins have become young again: what would you have one do here?

"Well, I assure you, monsieur, that I long only to return to my Rue d'Enfer, never again to leave it. I have fulfilled all my engagements towards my country and my friends. Once you and M. Bertin de Vaux have entered the State Council, I shall have nothing more to ask, for your talents will soon carry you higher. My retirement has, I hope, done a little to bring about the cessation of a formidable opposition; public liberty has been won for France for ever. My sacrifice must now end with my role in life. I ask nothing but to return to my 'Infirmary.' I have nothing but praise for this country; I have been admirably received, I have found a government full of tolerance and very well informed of affairs outside Italy; but, when all is said and done, nothing pleases me more than the idea of disappearing entirely from the world's scene: it is good to be preceded to the tomb by the silence which one will find there.

"I thank you for being so good as to speak to me of your labours. You will write a work which will be worthy of you and increase your reputation[669]. If you have any researches to make here, have the kindness to tell me of them: a rummage in the Vatican might furnish you with treasures. Alas, I saw but too much of that poor M. Thierry[670]! I assure you that I am haunted by his memory: so young, so full of love for his work, and to go! And, as always happens with real merit, his mind was improving and reason, with him, taking the place of system: I still hope for a miracle. I have written on his behalf; I have not even had an answer. I have been more fortunate for you, and a letter from M. de Martignac gives me to hope at last that justice, although tardy and incomplete, will be done you. I no longer live, monsieur, except for my friends; you must permit me to include yourself in the number of those who are still left to me.

"I remain, monsieur, with as much sincerity as admiration,

"Your most devoted servant[671],

"Chateaubriand."

Augustin Thierry.

To Madame Récamier

"Rome, Saturday, 8 November 1832.

"M. de La Ferronnays informs me of the surrender of Varna[672], which I knew. I believe that I once told you that the whole question seemed to me to lie in the fall of that place, and that the Grand Turk would not dream of peace until the Russians had done what they did not do in their earlier wars. Our newspapers have been wretchedly Turcophile these last times. How can they ever have been able to forget the noble cause of Greece and to fall into admiration before the barbarians who spread slavery and pestilence over the country of great men and the fairest portion of Europe? That is what we are, we French: a trifle of personal discontent makes us forget our principles and the most generous sentiments. The Turks, when beaten, will perhaps arouse some pity in me; the Turks victorious would fill me with horror.

"So my friend M. de La Ferronnays remains in power. I flatter myself that my determination to follow him has got rid of the competitors for his office. But, after all, I shall have to leave this; I now long only to return to my solitude and to quit the career of politics. I thirst for independence in my last years. New generations have arisen, they will find the public liberty established for which I have fought so hard: let them then lay hold of, but let them not misuse my inheritance, and let me go to die in peace near you.

"I went two days ago to walk in the grounds of the Villa Panfili: what a beautiful solitude!"

"Rome, Saturday, 15 November.

"There has been a first ball at Torlonia's[673]. I met all the English on earth there; I thought myself still Ambassador in London. The Englishwomen appear to me to be figurantes who are engaged to dance in the winter in Paris, Milan, Rome, Naples, and who return to London in the spring, when their engagements have expired. The hoppings on the ruins of the Capitol, the uniform manners which 'great' society puts on everywhere are very strange things: if even I had the resource of escape into the deserts of Rome!

"What is really deplorable here, what clashes with the nature of the place is that multitude of insipid Englishwomen and frivolous dandies who, holding each other linked by the arm, as the bats do by the wing, parade their eccentricity, their boredom and their insolence at your receptions, and make themselves at home in your house as at an inn. This vagrant and swaggering Great Britain makes for your seats at public solemnities, and boxes with you to turn you out of them: all day long it hastily swallows pictures and ruins and, in the evening, it comes to swallow cakes and ices at your parties, feeling that it confers a great honour upon you in doing so. I do not know how an ambassador can endure those unmannerly guests, nor why he does not show them his door."

My Memorandum on the East.

I have spoken in the Congrès de Vérone of the existence of my Memorandum on Eastern Affairs. When I sent it, in 1828, to M. le Comte de La Ferronnays, then Minister for Foreign Affairs, the world was not what it is: in France, the Legitimacy existed; in Russia, Poland had not perished; Spain was still Bourbon; England had not yet the honour of protecting us. Many things, therefore, have become old in this Memorandum: to-day, my foreign policy would, in many respects, be different; twelve years have altered diplomatic relations, but the basis of the truths has remained the same. I have inserted this Memorandum in its entirety in order once more to revenge the Restoration for the absurd reproaches which continue to be obstinately addressed to it, in spite of the evidence of facts. The Restoration, so soon as it had chosen its ministers from among its friends, never ceased to occupy itself with the independence and honour of France: it protested against the Treaties of Vienna; it demanded protective frontiers, not for the vain-glory of pushing itself to the banks of the Rhine, but to ensure its safety; it laughed when they talked to it of the equilibrium of Europe, an equilibrium so unjustly broken where it was concerned: that was why it first wished to cover itself on the south, because it had pleased the others to disarm it on the north. At Navarino, it recovered a navy and the liberty of Greece; the Eastern Question did not take it unawares.

I have kept three opinions on the East from the time at which I wrote that Memorandum: