I shall never forget the night I spent after that letter. There are situations too painful for description, griefs that may be conceived, but cannot be expressed. I already beheld myself without the slightest resources in Paris; without a mother, without relations or friends, and like those who seek but do not find, who cry and who are made sport of, who would fain attach themselves to some one, and are despised. I was told to start for Amsterdam. How could I? I could imagine what it must have cost my ‘father’ to write that letter. Perhaps he believed that experience had already given me the wisdom which, as a rule, only comes with years, and that the journey of a thousand leagues which I had made with him had taught me to vanquish obstacles. On that occasion, though, I was not alone: his courage sustained mine. In the present instance, his absence left me no other support than the future and God. My sleep was disturbed and agitated; it was not rest, it was simply the temporary forgetfulness of my trouble. I was looking forward to the cruel struggle with the world; I beheld myself flung amidst the crowd to dispute for a crust of bread with the rest of mankind. The days went by like centuries, for if it be true, as the Prince de Ligne said, that happiness has wings, misfortune has legs of lead. Poor misguided creatures that we are! at fifteen we fancy that we have exhausted fate; at the slightest storm we bend our heads and say, ‘There’s no longer any hope.’ And at sixty we still go on hoping. One resolution came from all those conflicting ideas. It was high time; for I no longer saw the faintest chance of staving off the crisis, or of temporising with M. Chandeau, whose face became more sour every day. I resolved to go to Mme. Récamier, whom I knew to be at her country house at Clichy-la-Garenne. I made up my mind to go and implore her help, as one implores that of an angel from heaven when everything on earth has failed. One fine May morning, I started from the Rue Coquillière for Clichy. On my way, I tried to screw my courage to the sticking-point by recalling the happy times of my early youth, and in the conjuring up of those pictures, the image of Mme. Récamier, who had been the companion of my liveliest joys and of my short-lived griefs, re-appeared continually. Recalling, one by one, the proofs of her genuine affection, always so lavishly bestowed, I dismissed all fear that her immense fortune, her high social position, would cause her to deny the friend of her childhood, coming to her homeless, proscribed, and unhappy.