I replied that I was not committing a folly; that I was acting in the full conviction of my reason; that his ministry was most unpopular; that those prejudices might be unjust, but that, in fine, they existed; that all France was persuaded that he would attack the public liberties, and that it was impossible for me, their defender, to row in the same boat with those who passed for the enemies of those liberties. I was somewhat embarrassed in making this rejoinder, because, at bottom, I had nothing immediate to object to in the new ministers; I could attack them only in a future the existence of which they were entitled to deny. M. de Polignac swore to me that he loved the Charter as much as I did; but he loved it in his own way, he loved it too closely. Unfortunately, the affection which one shows to a daughter whom one has dishonoured is of little use to her.

The conversation was prolonged on the same lines for nearly an hour. M. de Polignac concluded by telling me that, if I consented to take back my resignation, the King would see me with pleasure and hear whatever I wished to say to him against his ministry; but that, if I persisted in my determination to resign, His Majesty thought that it would serve no purpose to see me and that a conversation between him and myself could be only an unpleasant thing.

I rejoined:

"Then, prince, look upon my resignation as given. I have never retracted in my life, and, since it does not suit the King to see his faithful subject, I do not insist."

After those words, I took my leave. I begged the prince to restore the Roman Embassy to M. le Duc de Laval, if he still wished for it, and I recommended the members of my legation to him. Then I took my way on foot, along the Boulevard des Invalides, for my Infirmary, poor wounded man that I was. M. de Polignac, when I left him, appeared to me to be in that state of imperturbable confidence which made of him a mute eminently fitted to strangle an empire.

My resignation as Ambassador to Rome having been sent in, I wrote to the Sovereign Pontiff:

"Most Holy Father,

"As French Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1823, I had the happiness to be the interpreter of the wishes of the late King Louis XVIII. for the exaltation of Your Holiness to the Chair of St. Peter. As Ambassador of His Majesty Charles X. to the Court of Rome, I had the still greater happiness to see Your Beatitude raised to the Sovereign Pontificate, and to hear from your lips words that will always be the glory of my life. Now that I am ending the lofty mission which I had the honour to fulfil, I come to express to Your Holiness the very keen regrets with which I do not cease to be penetrated. It but remains for me, Most Holy Father, to lay at your sacred feet my sincere gratitude for your kindness, and to ask you for your apostolic blessing.

"I am, with the greatest veneration and the most profound respect,

"Your Holiness' most humble and most obedient servant,

"Chateaubriand."

For several days I finished rending my bowels in my Utica; I wrote letters to demolish the edifice which I had raised with so much love. As, in the death of a man, it is the little details, the familiar domestic actions that touch us, so, in the death of a dream, the little realities which destroy it are the keenest. An eternal exile on the ruins of Rome had been my idle fancy. Like Dante, I had arranged never to return to my country.

These testamentary elucidations will not possess for the readers of these Memoirs the same interest that they have for me. The old bird falls from the branch where it has taken shelter; it quits life for death. Dragged away by the current, it has but changed one stream for the other.