THE VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND TO THE COMTE DE LA FERRONAYS[237]
"Should you by chance still be çoisRenéin St. Petersburg, monsieur le comte, I will not end our correspondence without telling you of all the esteem and all the friendship with which you have inspired me: keep well; be happier than I, and believe that you will find me again in any circumstance of life. I am writing a line to the Emperor.
The reply to this farewell reached me in the early days of August. M. de La Ferronnays had accepted the functions of ambassador under my ministry; later, I, in my turn, became ambassador under the ministry of M. de La Ferronnays: neither of us thought himself to be rising or descending. Fellow-countrymen and friends, we mutually did each other justice. M. de La Ferronnays endured the harshest trials without complaining; he remained loyal to his sufferings and to his noble poverty. After my fall, he acted on my behalf at St. Petersburg, as I would have acted on his. An honest man is always sure of being understood by an honest man. I am happy to produce this touching evidence of the courage, the loyalty and the elevation of soul of M. de La Ferronnays. At the moment when I received this note, it was a very superior compensation to me for the capricious and hackneyed favours of fortune. It is only here, for the first time, that I think it right to violate the secrecy which friendship recommended to me.
THE COMTE DE LA FERRONAYS TO THE VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND
"The Russian mail of the day before yesterday brought me your little letter of the 16th; it will be for me one of the most precious of all those which I have had the happiness to receive from you; I am keeping it as a title in which I glory, and I have the firm hope and the intimate conviction that soon I shall be able to present it to you in less melancholy circumstances. I shall imitate, monsieur le vicomte, the example which you set me, and I shall permit myself no reflection upon an event which has, in so abrupt and unexpected a manner, broken off the relations which the service established between you and myself; the very nature of those relations, the confidence with which you honoured me, lastly, considerations of a much graver kind, because they are not exclusively personal, will explain to you sufficiently the motives and all the extent of my regrets. What has just occurred still remains entirely inexplicable to me; I am absolutely ignorant of the reasons, but I see the effects; they were so easy, so natural to foresee, that I am astonished that people were so little afraid to set them at naught. I am too well acquainted, however, with the nobility of the sentiments which animate you and with the purity of your patriotism, not to be very sure that you will approve of the conduct which I have thought right to follow in this circumstance; it was required of me by my duty, by my love for my country and even by the interest of your glory; and you are too good a Frenchman to accept, in the position in which you find yourself, the protection and the support of foreigners. You have won for ever the confidence and esteem of Europe; but it is France whom you serve, and you belong to her alone. She may be unjust; but neither you nor your real friends will ever suffer your cause to be made less pure or less fine by entrusting its defense to foreign voices. I have, therefore, silenced every kind of private feeling or consideration in the presence of the general interest; I have forestalled measures, the first effect of which would have been to arouse dangerous divisions among us and to violate the dignity of the Throne. This is the last service which I have rendered here before my departure; you alone, monsieur le vicomte, shall know of it; the confidence was due to you, and I know the nobility of your character too well not to feel very sure that you will keep my secret and that you will consider my conduct, in this circumstance, consonant with the sentiments which you have the right to exact from those whom you honour with your friendship and your esteem.