His personal charm, his natural gifts, and, in short, the useful connections he rapidly made for himself, soon procured him employment and a start in life. At the outset, he obtained through the goodwill of Prince Eugène missions to Italy, to Marmont in Dalmatia, to the Court of King Joseph at Naples, and finally to Rome, where he was cordially received by Lucien Bonaparte and his family. The pages, whether in his _Recollections of the Congress of Vienna_ or in his _Unpublished Notes_, referring to his primary benefactors, go far to exonerate him from the charge of ingratitude, for he lavishes upon those benefactors all the ornaments of his rhetoric; at any rate, nearly all, for the greater part of the acknowledgment of his indebtedness goes mainly to Field-Marshal Prince de Ligne, who was his protector, his beneficent and ... very useful relative, a member of the Chambonas family, having, as we already stated, married a Princesse de Ligne. La Garde first met with the Prince de Ligne in the Eternal City. He soon became a familiar visitor to the octogenarian prince, who, like the generous Mæcenas that he was, gave him a pressing invitation to come and settle near him in Vienna. The young fellow was too sensible to make light of an offer insuring material welfare and a regular existence after years of uncertainty. He, therefore, settled in Vienna near to his benefactor, yielding for the matter of that to the spell exercised over every one by that very superior specimen of manhood, and requiting his kindness with an affectionate veneration increasing as time went on. The whole of the first part of the _Recollections_ attests a boundless gratitude; and if on the one hand that work constitutes the brightest ornament of our author’s literary crown, it constitutes on the other the most complete panegyric of the prince who had become ‘his idol.’ From Vienna, the Comte de La Garde passed into Russia, where he met with a cordial welcome from the elegant society of St. Petersburg. In 1810 he published there a volume of poems, which obtained a most signal success. Subsequently invited to Poland by the Comte Félix Potocki, and treated with the most generous hospitality, he was enabled to devote himself to numerous literary works; and as a mark of gratitude to his hosts, he translated into French Trembecki’s poem dedicated to the cherished wife of Comte Félix, the celebrated Sophie Potocka.