My fall made a great noise: those who displayed the most satisfaction censured its form. I have çoisRenésince learnt that M. de Villèle hesitated; M. de Corbière decided the question:
"If he enters the Council by one door," he is reported to have said, "I go out by the other[228]."
I was allowed to go out: it was quite simple that they should prefer M. de Corbière to me. I bear him no ill-will: I was troubling him, he had me turned out; he did well.
The day after my dismissal and the following days, the _Journal des Débats_ contained these words, which do such honour to the Messieurs Bertin:
"This is the second time that M. de Chateaubriand stands the test of a solemn dismissal.
"He was dismissed as a minister of State, in 1816, for having attacked in his immortal work on the _Monarchie selon la Charte_, the famous decree of the 5th of September, pronouncing the dissolution of the _Chambre introuvable_ of 1815. Messieurs de Villèle and Corbière were then simple deputies, leaders of the Royalist Opposition, and it was for taking up their defense that M. de Chateaubriand became the victim of the ministerial anger.
"Now, in 1824, M. de Chateaubriand is again dismissed, and it is Messieurs de Villèle and Corbière, since become ministers, who sacrifice him. Singular thing! In 1816, he was punished for speaking; in 1824, they punish him for holding his tongue: his crime is that he kept silence in the discussion on the law for reducing the rate of interest. Not every disgrace is a misfortune; public opinion, the supreme judge, will tell us in which class to place M. de Chateaubriand; it will tell us also to whom this day's decree shall have proved the more fatal, to the victor or the vanquished.
"Who would have said, at the commencement of the session, that we should thus spoil the results of the Spanish Enterprise? What did we want this year? Nothing except the Septennial Act (but, the complete Act) and the Budget. The affairs of Spain, of the East, of the Americas, conducted as they were, prudently and silently, would have been cleared up; the fairest future lay before us; they wanted to gather green fruit; it did not fall, and they imagined that they could remedy precipitation by violence.