My duties not yet seeming to me to be çoisRenéconsummated, I have defended the widow and the orphan, I have undergone the trial and the prison which Bonaparte, even in his greatest angers, spared me. I stand forth between my resignation on the death of the Duc d'Enghien and my cry on behalf of the plundered child; I rest upon a prince shot dead and a prince in banishment; they sustain my old arms entwined in their feeble arms: O Royalists, are you so well attended?
But, the more I have tied down my life with the bonds of devotion and honour, the more have I changed my liberty of action for independence of thought; that thought has resumed its nature. Now, outside everything, I appraise governments at their worth. Can one believe in the kings of the future? Is one to believe in the peoples of the present? The wise and disconsolate man of this century without conviction finds a wretched repose only in political atheism. Let the young generations lull themselves with hopes: before hitting the mark, they will wait long years; the ages are proceeding towards the general levelling, but they do not hasten their speed at the call of our desires. Time is a sort of eternity adapted to mortal things; it counts the races and their sorrows for nothing in the works which it accomplishes.
It follows from what you have just read that, if what I advised had been done, if petty longings had not placed their own satisfaction before the interests of France; if those in power had shown a clearer appreciation of relative capacities; if the foreign Cabinets had, like Alexander, deemed that the safety of the French Monarchy lay in Liberal institutions; if those Cabinets had not maintained the restored authority in defiance of the principles of the Charter, the Legitimacy would still be occupying the throne. Ah, what is past is past! It is useless to turn back, to resume the place which we have quitted; we find nothing of that which we left there: men, ideas, circumstances, all have faded away.
[Footnote 262: This book was written in 1839.--T.]
[Footnote 263: Marthe Camille Bachasson, Comte de Montalivet (1801-1880), inherited the title of peer on the death of his father and his elder brother (22 January and 12 October 1823), but was not admitted to take his seat in the Upper Chamber until 12 May 1826, because of his age. He became, from the first, a defender of constitutional ideas; published in 1827 a pamphlet entitled, _Un jeune pair de France aux Français de son age_; held several offices, from 1830 to 1839; and was Intendant General of the Civil List from 1839 to 1848. In 1879, M. de Montalivet was elected a perpetual senator.--B.]