"Why are you here? I have no need of any one. There is no mouse-hole small enough to hide me."
He has said also, repeatedly:
"Don't talk about me; don't trouble about me; I am nobody; I don't want to be anybody. I have twenty thousand francs a year; it is more than I need. I have to think only of saving my soul and making a good end."
Again he has said:
"If my nephew had need of me, I would serve him with my sword; but I signed my abdication, against my own feeling, out of obedience to my father: I shall not renew it; I shall sign nothing more; let them leave me in peace, word is enough: I never lie."
The Dauphin (Louis XIX.)
And that is true: his mouth has never uttered a lie. He reads much; he has considerable attainments, even in languages; his correspondence with M. de Villèle during the Spanish War has its value, and his correspondence with Madame la Dauphine, which was intercepted and inserted in the Moniteur, makes one love him. His probity is incorruptible; his religion is profound; his filial piety rises to the height of virtue; but an unconquerable shyness deprives him of the full use of his faculties.
To put him at his ease, I avoided entering upon politics with him and only enquired after his father's health: this is a subject on which he is inexhaustible. The difference in climate between Edinburgh and Prague, the King's prolonged attacks of gout, the waters of Teplitz which the King was going to take, the good which they would do him: there you have the purport of our conversation. M. le Dauphin watches over Charles X. as over a child; he kisses his hand when he goes up to him, asks how he has slept, picks up his pocket-handkerchief, speaks loud so as to make himself heard by him, prevents him from eating what might disagree with him, makes him put on or leave off an over-coat according to the state of the weather, takes him out walking and brings him back again. I was careful to speak to him of nothing else. Of the Days of July, of the fall of an empire, of the future of the Monarchy, not a word.
"It is eleven o'clock," he said: "you are going to see the children; we shall meet again at dinner."
I was taken to the apartment of the Governor; the doors opened: I saw the Baron de Damas with his pupil, Madame de Gontaut with Mademoiselle[559], M. Barrande[560], M. La Villate[561] and a few other devoted servants; all were standing. The young Prince, scared, looked at me sideways, looked at his governor as though to ask him what he was to do, how to act in this danger, or as though to obtain permission to speak to me. Mademoiselle smiled with a half-smile and a timid and independent air; she seemed to be paying attention to her brother's movements and gestures. Madame de Gontaut looked proud of the education which she had given her pupils. After bowing to the two children, I went up to the orphan and said: