Prague.
The fog lifted. The approaches by the Linz Road are livelier than by the Ratisbon Road; the landscape is less insipid. One sees villages, country-houses with woods and ponds. I met a woman with a resigned and pious face, going bent under the weight of an enormous basket; two old market-women with apples spread out for sale beside a ditch; a young girl and a young man sitting on the grass, the man smoking, the girl glad, spending the day beside her friend and the night in his arms; children at a cottage-door playing with cats or driving geese to the common; turkeys in coops going to Prague, like myself, for Henry V.'s coming of age; next, a shepherd blowing his horn, while Hyacinthe, Baptiste, the Venetian cicerone and My Excellency jolted along in our patched calash: such are the destinies of life. I would not give a doit for the best of them.
Bohemia had nothing new to show me: my ideas were fixed on Prague.
Prague, 29 September 1833.
The second day after my arrival in Prague, I sent Hyacinthe to take a letter to Madame la Duchesse de Berry, whom, according to my reckoning, he ought to meet at Trieste. This letter informed the Princess that "I had found the Royal Family leaving for Leoben; that some young Frenchmen had arrived for the coming of age of Henry V. and that the King was avoiding them; that I had seen Madame la Dauphine; that she had bidden me to go at once to Butschirad, where Charles X. still was; that I had not seen Mademoiselle, because she was a little unwell; that I had been admitted to her room, where the shutters were closed, and that she had held out to me her hot hand in the dark and asked me to save them all; that I had gone to Butschirad, seen M. de Blacas and talked with him about the declaration of the majority of Henry V.; that I had been taken to the King's room and found him asleep and that, after I had subsequently handed him Madame la Duchesse de Berry's letter, he had appeared to me to be very much incensed against my august client; that, otherwise, the short deed drawn up by me on the subject of the coming of age had seemed to be to his liking."
My letter concluded with the following paragraph:
"And now, Madame, I must not conceal the fact from you that there is a great deal amiss here. Our enemies would laugh if they saw us contending for a kingship without a kingdom, a sceptre which is merely the stick with which we assist our steps on the pilgrimage, perhaps a long one, of our exile. All the drawbacks lie in your son's education, and I see no prospect of its being changed. I am returning to the midst of the poor whom Madame de Chateaubriand provides for; there I shall always be at your orders. If ever you become Henry's absolute mistress, if you continue to think that that precious trust might safely be placed in my hands, I shall be as happy as I shall be honoured to devote the rest of my life to him; but I could not undertake so terrible a responsibility except on the condition of remaining entirely free, subject to your advice, in my selections and ideas and of being placed on an independent soil, outside the circle of the absolute monarchies."
The letter enclosed the following copy of my draft for the declaration of majority:
"We, Henry V., having attained the age at which the laws of the Realm settle the majority of the Heir to the Throne, do ordain that the first act of that majority shall be a solemn protest against the usurpation of Louis-Philippe Duc d'Orléans. Wherefore, and by the advice of Our Council, We have drawn up this present Act to maintain Our rights and the rights of Frenchmen.
"Given on the thirtieth day of September in the Year of Our Lord one thousand eight hundred and thirty-three."
Prague, 30 September 1833.