"Thursday.

"You are doubtless aware, my noble colleague, that the business was settled at eleven o'clock yesterday evening, and that all is arranged on the terms agreed between yourself and the Duc de Richelieu. Your intervention has been most useful to us; let thanks be given you for this preliminary step towards an improvement which must henceforth be looked upon as probable.

"Ever yours for life,

"J. de Polignac[58]."

"Paris, Wednesday, 20th December,
"Half-past eleven at night.

"I have just called on you, noble viscount, but you had retired: I have come from Villèle, who himself returned late from the conference which you prepared for him and told him of. He asked me, as your nearest neighbour, to let you know that Corbière also wished to tell you, on his side, that the affair which you really conducted and managed during the day is definitely settled in the simplest and shortest manner: he without portfolio, his friend with the Instruction. He seemed to think that one might have waited a little longer and obtained better conditions; but it was not seemly to gainsay an interpreter and negociator like yourself. It is you really who have opened the entrance to this new career to them: they reckon on you to make it smooth for them. Do you, on your side, during the short time that we shall still have the advantage of keeping you among us, speak to your more spirited friends to second, or at least not to oppose the plans for union. Good-night. I once more make you my compliment on the promptness with which you conduct negociations. You must settle Germany in the same way, so as to return sooner to the midst of your friends. I personally am delighted to see your position so much simplified.

"I renew all my sentiments to you.

"M. de Montmorency."

"I enclose, monsieur, a request addressed by one of the King's Body-guards to the King of Prussia: it has been handed to me and recommended by a field-officer of the Guards. I beg you, therefore, to take it with you and to make use of it if, when you have felt your ground a little in Berlin[59], you think that it is of a nature to obtain some success.

"I have great pleasure in taking this occasion to congratulate myself as well as you on this morning's Moniteur[60], and to thank you for the part which you have taken in this fortunate issue, which, I hope, will have the happiest influence on the affairs of our France.

"Pray receive the assurance of my high regard and of my sincere attachment.

"Pasquier."

This series of notes is sufficient evidence that I am not boasting; it would bore me too much to be the fly on the coach; the pole or the coachman's nose are not places where I have ever had any ambition to sit: whether the coach reaches the top or rolls to the bottom matters little to me. Accustomed to live hidden in my own recesses, or momentarily in the wide life of the centuries, I had no taste for the mysteries of the ante-chamber. I do not enter readily into circulation like a piece of current money; to escape, I withdraw myself nearer to God: a fixed idea that comes from Heaven isolates you and kills everything around you.

[1] This book was written in Paris in 1839, and revised 22 February 1845.—T.

[2] "On an occurrence when the chamber, or a deputation of it, brought to Louis XVIII. some extravagant expression of its loyalty and love of kings, the monarch observed, no one can now tell whether in sincerity or irony, that such a chamber was introuvable, apparently impossible to find or replace. The epithet was too good to be lost; and the Chamber of 1815 was known to its contemporaries, and will be remembered in French history, as the Chambre introuvable" (Eyre Crowe, History of the Reigns of Louis XVIII. and Charles X.).—T.

[3] The Order nominating the Vicomte de Chateaubriand to the Chamber of Peers is dated 17 August 1815.—B.

[4] 19 December 1815.—B.

[5] Edme Bonaventure Courtois (1756-1816), member of the Convention for the Department of the Aube. He took charge of Robespierre's papers, including the will of Marie-Antoinette, after the 9 Thermidor, and published a notable report on them in January 1795. All the papers in Courtois' possession were seized by the police in January 1816.—T.