I passed at ten o'clock in the evening in front of Butschirad, in the silent fields, brightly lit by the moon. I saw the huddled mass of villa, hamlet and ruin inhabited by the Dauphin: the rest of the Royal Family were travelling. Such profound isolation came upon me with a shock; that man, as I have already told you, possessed virtues: he was moderate in politics, he entertained few prejudices; he had only a drop of the blood of St. Louis in his veins, but he had that; his uprightness was unequalled, his word as inviolable as God's. Gifted by nature with courage, he was undone at Rambouillet by his filial piety. He showed himself brave and humane in Spain, and had the glory of restoring a kingdom to his kinsman, but was not able to save his own. Louis-Antoine, since the Days of July, thought of asking a shelter in Andalusia: Ferdinand would doubtless have refused it to him. The husband of Louis XVI.'s daughter was languishing in a village in Bohemia; a dog whose voice I heard was the Prince's only guard: thus Cerberus barks at the shades in the regions of death, silence and darkness.
I was never able, in the course of my long life, to revisit my paternal hearth; I was not able to settle down in Rome, where I so greatly longed to die; the eight hundred leagues which I was now completing, including my first journey to Bohemia, would have taken me to the most beautiful sites in Greece, Italy and Spain. I have covered all this distance and spent my last days to return to this cold, grey land: what have I done to Heaven to deserve this?
I entered Prague on the 29th, at four o'clock in the evening. I alighted at the Bath Hotel. I did not see the young Saxon servant-girl[272]; she had gone back to Dresden to console the banished pictures of Raphael with the songs of Italy.
I leave Bohemia.
29 September to 6 October 1833.
At Schlau, at midnight, a carriage was changing horses in front of the post-office. Hearing French spoken, I put my head out of the calash and said:
"Gentlemen, are you going to Prague? You will not find Charles X. there; he has gone away with Henry V."
I mentioned my name.
"What, gone?" exclaimed several voices together. "Go ahead, postillion, go ahead!"