"My dear friend,çoisRené you and I, for long years, have not ceased fighting. It remains to us to preserve the King and the State from ecclesiastical, self-styled religious preponderance. In the old situations, the evil with its roots lay within ourselves: we could circumvent and master them. To-day the branches which cover us within have their roots without. Doctrines covered with the blood of Louis XVI. and Charles I. have consented to leave their place to doctrines stained with the blood of Henry IV. and Henry III. Neither you nor I will surely suffer this state of things; it is to unite with you, it is to receive your approval for my encouragement, it is to offer you as a soldier my heart and my arms, that I write to you.
"It is with these sentiments of admiration for yourself and of a true devotion, that I implore you with affection and also with respect.
[Sidenote: My reply to M. de Montlosier.]
"Your letter, my dear old friend, is very serious, and yet it has made me laugh where I am concerned. Alcibiades, Hannibal, Achilles! You do not say all that to me seriously. As to the chit of a girl of the son of Peleus, if it is my portfolio that is in question, I protest to you that I did not love the faithless one for three days, and that I did not regret her for a quarter of an hour. My resentment is another matter. M. de Villèle, to whom I was sincerely, heartily attached, has not only been lacking towards the duties of friendship, towards the public marks of affection which I gave him, towards the sacrifices which I had made for him, but even in the simplest matters of conduct.
"The King had no further need of my services: nothing more natural than to remove me from his counsels; but manner is everything to an honest man and, as I had not stolen the King's watch from his mantel-piece, I ought not to have been _turned out_ as I was. I had made the Spanish War alone and kept Europe in peace during that dangerous period; by that single fact I had given an army to the Legitimacy and, of all the ministers of the Restoration, I was the only one thrust out of my office without any mark of remembrance from the Crown, as though I had betrayed the Sovereign and the country. M. de Villèle thought that I would accept that treatment, and he has made a mistake. I have been a sincere friend, I shall remain an irreconcilable enemy. I was unluckily born; the injuries people do me never heal.