"Sir,
"I am leaving for Chaillot with my dear child.
"I wanted to thank you, but I feel that words are too cold to express the gratitude which I feel; I was right to think, sir, that your heart would suggest eloquent entreaties to you. I am sure that I am not deceived when I believe that it will tell you that I am not ungrateful and that it will depict to you better than I could the confusion of happiness into which your kindness has thrown me.
"Accept, sir, I beg, my most sincere thanks and deign to believe me the most affectionate of your servants.
"Charles Philipon."
To this singular mark of my credit, I will add this strange proof of my "fame:" a young Clerk[428] in M. Gisquet's offices addressed to me some very beautiful verses[429], which were handed to me by M. Gisquet himself; for, after all, we must be fair: if a government of literary men attacked me ignobly, the Muses defended me nobly; M. Villemain pronounced in my favour courageously, and, in the Journal des Débats itself, my fat friend Bertin protested, under his own signature, against my arrest.
Mademoiselle Noemi, which I presume must be Mademoiselle Gisquet's Christian name, used often to walk alone in the little garden, with a book in her hand. She would cast a stealthy glance towards my window. How sweet it would have been to be released from my irons, like Cervantes, by my master's daughter! While I was assuming a romantic air, handsome young M. Nay came to dispel my dream. I saw him talking with Mademoiselle Gisquet with that air which does not deceive us creators of sylphs. I tumbled down from my clouds, shut my window and abandoned the idea of growing my mustachios, bleached by the wind of adversity.
After fifteen days, an order of non-suit restored me to liberty, on the 30th of June, to the great happiness of Madame de Chateaubriand, who would have died, I believe, if my detention had been prolonged. She came to fetch me in a coach; I filled it with my little luggage as nimbly as I had formerly left the ministry, and I returned to the Rue d'Enfer with "that inexpressible finish which misfortune gives to virtue."
If history were to hand M. Gisquet down to posterity, perhaps he would arrive there in a rather bad plight; I want what I have just written to serve him here as a counter-poise to a hostile renown. I have nothing but praise for his attentions and his obligingness; doubtless, if I had been condemned, he would not have allowed me to escape; but, in short, he and his family treated me with a decency, a good taste, a feeling for my position, for what I was and for what I had been, which were not displayed by a literary Administration and by men of law who were the more brutal inasmuch as they were acting against the weak and had nothing to fear.
Of all the governments that have arisen in France during the last forty years, Philip's is the only one that threw me into the highwayman's cell; it laid its hand upon my head, upon my head respected even by an incensed conqueror: Napoleon raised his arm, but did not strike me. And why this anger? I will tell you: I dare to raise a protest in favour of right against might in a country in which I have asked for liberty under the Empire, for glory under the Restoration; in a country where, solitary that I am, I reckon not by brothers, sisters, children, joys, pleasures, but by tombstones. The last political changes have separated me from the rest of my friends: some have gone towards fortune and, all battered with their dishonour, pass by my poverty; others have abandoned their homes exposed to insults. The generations so greatly smitten with independence have sold themselves: from those generations, common in their conduct, intolerable in their pride, mediocre or mad in their writings, I expect nothing but scorn and I return it to them; they have not the wherewithal to understand me: they know nothing of loyalty to the sworn oath, love for generous institutions, respect for one's own opinions, contempt for success and gold, the felicity of sacrifice, the worship of what is weak and unhappy.
After the order of non-suit, one duty remained to me to perform. The offense with which I had been charged was connected with that for which M. Berryer was awaiting trial at Nantes. I was unable to explain my position to the examining magistrate, because I did not recognise the competency of the tribunal. To repair the harm which my silence might have done to M. Berryer, I wrote to M. the Minister of Justice[430] the letter which you will find below and which I made public through the medium of the newspapers:
Letter to M. Barthe.
"Paris, 3 July 1832.
"Monsieur le ministre de la justice,
"Permit me to perform with reference to yourself, in the interest of a man too long deprived of liberty, a duty prompted by conscience and honour.
"M. Berryer the Younger, when questioned by the examining magistrate at Nantes, on the 18th of last month, replied that 'he had seen Madame la Duchesse de Berry; that he had, with the respect due to her rank, her courage and her misfortunes, submitted to her his personal opinion and that of honourable friends on the actual situation of France and on the consequences of Her Royal Highness' presence in the West.'
"M. Berryer, developing this wide subject with his accustomed talent, summed it up thus:
"'No foreign or civil war, supposing it to be crowned with success, can either subdue or rally opinions.'
"Questioned as to the honourable friends of whom he had spoken, M. Berryer nobly said that, 'grave men having manifested to him an opinion on the present circumstances agreeing with his own, he had thought that he ought to strengthen his opinion with the authority of theirs; but that he would not give their names without their consent.'
"I, monsieur le ministre de la justice, am one of those men consulted by M. Berryer. Not only did I approve of his opinion, but I drew up a note in the sense of that very opinion. It was to be handed to Madame la Duchesse de Berry in the event that that Princess should really be on French soil, which I did not believe. As this first note was not signed, I wrote a second, which I signed and in which I still more earnestly entreated the intrepid mother of the grandson of Henry IV. to leave a country which has been torn by so many discords.
"This declaration was due from me to M. Berryer. The real culprit, if culprit there be, is I. This declaration will serve, I hope, for the prompt deliverance of the prisoner of Nantes; it will allow the guilt to rest upon my head alone of a fact, no doubt very innocent, of which, however, in the final result, I accept all the consequences.
"I have the honour to be, etc.
"Chateaubriand.
"Rue d'Enfer Saint Michel, No. 84."I wrote on the 9th of last month to M. le Comte de Montalivet on a matter relating to M. Berryer, but M. the Minister of the Interior did not think it incumbent upon him even to inform me that he had received my letter: as it is very important to me to know what becomes of that which I have the honour to write to-day to M. the Minister of Justice, I shall be infinitely obliged to him if he will instruct his office to send me an acknowledgment of its receipt.
"Ch."
The reply of M. the Minister of Justice was not long in coming; here it is: