"This minute, if they like," I used to reply.
On Whitsunday, the 6th of June 1824, I had found my way to the first drawing-rooms of Monsieur: an usher came to tell me that I was being asked for. It was Hyacinthe, my secretary. He told me, when he saw me, that I was no longer in office. I opened the packet which he handed me; I found in it this note from M. de Villèle:
"Monsieur le vicomte,
"In obedience to the King's orders, I am at once communicating to Your Excellency a decree which His Majesty has just issued.
"The Sieur Comte de Villèle, President of our Council of Ministers, is charged ad interim with the business of the Foreign Office, vice the Sieur Vicomte de Chateaubriand."
This decree was written in the hand of M. de Rainneville[227], who is good enough still to be embarrassed at it in my presence. Why, gracious Heaven! Do I know M. de Rainneville? Have I ever given him a thought? I meet him pretty often. Has he ever perceived that I knew that the decree by which I was struck off the list of ministers was written in his hand?
And yet, what had I done? Where did my intrigues or my ambition lie? Had I desired M. de Villèle's place, when going alone and in secret to walk in the depths of the Bois de Boulogne? It was that strange life that ruined me. I had the simplicity to remain as Heaven had made me and, because I longed for nothing, they thought that I wanted everything. To-day I can very well imagine that my life apart was a great mistake. What! You do not want to be anything? Go away! We do not choose that a man should despise what we worship, nor that he should think himself entitled to insult the mediocrity of our life.
The difficulties of wealth and the disadvantages of poverty followed me to my lodging in the Rue de l'Université: on the day of my dismissal, I had invitations sent out for a huge dinner-party at the Foreign Office; I had to send excuses to my guests and to pack three great courses, prepared for forty persons, into my little kitchen for two people. Montmirel and his assistants set to work and, cramming saucepans, frying-pans and stewpans into every corner, he put his warmed-up master-piece under shelter. An old friend came to share the marooned sailor's first meal. The Town and the Court came hastening up, for there was but one voice on the outrageousness of my dismissal after the service which I had just rendered; they were convinced that my disgrace would not last long; they gave themselves airs of independence in consoling a misfortune of a few days, at the end of which they would profitably remind the unlucky man returned to power that they had not abandoned him.
They were mistaken; they wasted their courage; they had reckoned on my lack of spirit, on my whining, on my toad-eating ambition, on my eagerness to plead guilty, to wait standing on those who had driven me out: they ill knew me. I retired without even claiming the salary which was due to me, without receiving a favour or a groat from the Court; I closed my door to whosoever had betrayed me; I refused the condoling crowd, and I took up arms. Then all dispersed; universal condemnation burst forth, and my game, which had at first seemed fine to the drawing-rooms and ante-chambers, appeared horrible.
Should I not have done better, after my discharge, to be silent? Had not the brutality of the proceeding brought back the public to me? M. de Villèle has repeatedly said that the letter of dismissal was delayed; by this accident it had the misfortune to be handed to me only at the Palace. Perhaps this was so; but, when we play, we must calculate the chances of the game; we must, above all, not write to a friend of any worth a letter which we should be ashamed to address to a guilty footman whom we would put out of doors without ceremony or remorse. The irritation of the Villèle party against myself was the greater inasmuch as they wished to appropriate my work to themselves and as I had displayed ability in matters of which I had been supposed to know nothing.
No doubt, with silence and moderation, as they said, I should have been lauded by the race who live in perpetual adoration of the portfolio; by doing penance for my innocence, I should have prepared my return to the Council. It would have been more in the common course of things; but that was taking me for the man I am not; that was suspecting me of a desire to recapture the helm of the State, the wish to make my way: a desire and a wish which would not occur to me in a hundred thousand years.