"So it is çoisRenéproved that one can save an unfortunate king!"
On the Sunday, I returned, before the meeting of the council, to pay my court to the Royal Family; the august Princess spoke an obliging sentence to each of my colleagues: to me she did not address a word. I did not, certainly, deserve such an honour. The silence of the orphan of the Temple can never be ungrateful: Heaven has a right to the worship of the earth and owes nothing to any one.
I then lingered on till Whitsuntide; still, my friends were not without anxiety; they often said to me:
"This minute, if they like," I used to reply.
On Whitsunday, the 6th of June 1824, I had found my way to the first drawing-rooms of Monsieur: an usher came to tell me that I was being asked for. It was Hyacinthe, my secretary. He told me, when he saw me, that I was no longer in office. I opened the packet which he handed me; I found in it this note from M. de Villèle:
"In obedience to the King's orders, I am at once communicating to Your Excellency a decree which His Majesty has just issued.
"The Sieur Comte de Villèle, President of our Council of Ministers, is charged _ad interim_ with the business of the Foreign Office, _vice_ the Sieur Vicomte de Chateaubriand."
This decree was written in the hand of M. de Rainneville[227], who is good enough still to be embarrassed at it in my presence. Why, gracious Heaven! Do I know M. de Rainneville? Have I ever given him a thought? I meet him pretty often. Has he ever perceived that I knew that the decree by which I was struck off the list of ministers was written in his hand?
And yet, what had I done? Where did my intrigues or my ambition lie? Had I desired M. de Villèle's place, when going alone and in secret to walk in the depths of the Bois de Boulogne? It was that strange life that ruined me. I had the simplicity to remain as Heaven had made me and, because I longed for nothing, they thought that I wanted everything. To-day I can very well imagine that my life apart was a great mistake. What! You do not want to be anything? Go away! We do not choose that a man should despise what we worship, nor that he should think himself entitled to insult the mediocrity of our life.
The difficulties of wealth and the disadvantages of poverty followed me to my lodging in the Rue de l'Université: on the day of my dismissal, I had invitations sent out for a huge dinner-party at the Foreign Office; I had to send excuses to my guests and to pack three great courses, prepared for forty persons, into my little kitchen for two people. Montmirel and his assistants set to work and, cramming saucepans, frying-pans and stewpans into every corner, he put his warmed-up master-piece under shelter. An old friend came to share the marooned sailor's first meal. The Town and the Court came hastening up, for there was but one voice on the outrageousness of my dismissal after the service which I had just rendered; they were convinced that my disgrace would not last long; they gave themselves airs of independence in consoling a misfortune of a few days, at the end of which they would profitably remind the unlucky man returned to power that they had not abandoned him.