"If the King did me the honour to consult me, this is what I should propose for the good of his service and the repose of France.
"The Left Centre of the Elective Chamber is gratified at the nomination of M. Royer-Collard[153]: still, I should think peace more assured, if they brought into the Council a man of merit taken from that side and chosen from among the members of the Chamber of Peers or the Chamber of Deputies.
"To place in addition in the Council a deputy from the side of the Independent Right.
"To complete the distribution of offices in that spirit.
"As to things:
"To bring forward at a suitable time a complete law on the liberty of the press, said law to abolish constructional prosecutions and the optional censorship; to prepare a communal law; to complete the Septennial Act, carrying the eligible age to thirty years; in one word, to proceed, Charter in hand, courageously to defend religion against impiety, but at the same time to protect it against fanaticism and the indiscretions of a zeal that do it great harm.
"As to foreign affairs, three things must guide the King's ministers: the honour, the independence and the interest of France.
"New France is wholly Royalist; she may become wholly Revolutionary: let them follow the institutions, and I would answer with my head for a future of many centuries; let them violate or molest those institutions, and I would not answer for a future of a few months.
"I and my friends are ready to support with all our strength an administration formed on the bases as suggested above.
"Chateaubriand."
A voice in which the woman prevailed over the princess came to give consolation to what was only the affliction of a life incessantly varying. The handwriting of H.R.H. the Duchess of Cumberland was so greatly altered that I had some difficulty in recognising it. The letter bore the date of the 28th of September 1821: it is the last which I received from that royal hand[154]. Alas, the other noble friends who at that time supported me in Paris have quitted this earth! Shall I, then, remain with such stubbornness here below that none of the persons to whom I have attached myself can survive me? Happy they on whom age has the effect of wine and who lose their memory when they have had their fill of days!
The resignations of Messieurs de Villèle and de Corbière were not long in bringing about the dissolution of the Cabinet and the return of my friends to the Council, as I had foreseen: M. le Vicomte de Montmorency was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs, M. de Villèle Minister of Finance, M. de Corbière Minister of the Interior[155]. I had played too great a part in recent political movements and exercised too great an influence on public opinion to be left on one side. It was resolved that I should replace M. le Duc Decazes at the London Embassy. Louis XVIII. always consented to send me away. I went to thank him; he spoke to me of his favourite with a constancy of attachment rare in kings; he "begged" me to remove from the mind of George IV. the prejudice which that sovereign had conceived against M. Decazes, and myself to forget the differences which had existed between me and the former Minister of Police. That monarch, from whom so many misfortunes had been unable to draw a tear, was moved by a few sufferings which may have afflicted the man whom he had honoured with his friendship.
And am sent to London.
My nomination reawoke my memories: Charlotte returned to my thoughts; my youth, my emigration appeared before me, with their sorrows and their joys. Human weakness also made it a pleasure to me to reappear, well-known and powerful, there where I had been unknown and powerless. Madame de Chateaubriand, fearing the sea, dared not cross the Channel, and I set out alone. The secretaries of the Embassy had gone before me.
[61] This book was written in 1839 and revised in December 1846.—T.
[62] Lycurgus (circa 880 B.C.), the Spartan legislator, after making his fellow-citizens swear to make no changes in his laws during his absence, set out on a long journey, but never returned.—T.
[63] The Battle of Jena, won by Napoleon, and of Auerstädt, a few miles distant, won by Davout on the same day, 14 October 1806.—T.
[64] Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832) lived eleven years longer, dying at Weimar at the age of 83.—T.