Among the extreme measures was the Septennial Bill, which passed both houses against the protest of liberal members, some of whom afterward became famous,--such as General Foy, General Sebastiani, Dupont (de l'Eure), Casimir Périer, Lafitte, Lanjuinais. This law was a _coup d'état_ against electoral opinions and representative government. It gave the king and his government the advantage of fixing for seven years longer the majority which was secured by the elections of 1822, and of closing the Chamber against a modification of public opinions. Villèle and Chateaubriand were the authors of this act. Another bill was proposed by Villèle, not so objectionable, which was to reduce the interest on the loans contracted by the State; in other words, to borrow money at less interest and pay off the old debts,--a salutary financial measure adopted in England, and later by the United States after the Civil War. But this measure was bitterly opposed by the clergy, who looked upon it as a reduction of their incomes. Here Chateaubriand virtually abandoned the government, in his uniform support of the temporalities of the Church; and the measure failed; which so deeply exasperated both the king and the prime minister that Chateaubriand was dismissed from his office as minister of foreign affairs. The fallen minister angrily resented his disgrace, and thenceforward secretly took part against the government, embarrassing it by his articles in the journals of the day. He did not renounce his conservative opinions; but he became the personal enemy of Villèle. Chateaubriand had no magnanimity. He retired to nurse his resentments in the society of Madame Récamier, with whom he had formed a friendship difficult to be distinguished from love. He had been always her devoted admirer when she reigned a queen of society in the fashionable _salons_ of Paris, and continued his intimacy with her until his death. Daily did he, when a broken old man, make his accustomed visit to her modest apartments in the Convent of St. Joseph, and give vent to his melancholy and morbid feelings. He regarded himself as the most injured man in France. He became discontented with the Crown, and even with the aristocracy. On the day of his retirement from the ministry the intelligence of the Royalist party followed him in opposition to the government, whose faults he had encouraged and shared. The "Journal des Débats," the most influential newspaper in France, deserted Villèle; and from this defection may be dated, says Lamartine, "all those enmities against the government of the Restoration which collected in one work of aggression the most contradictory ideas, which alienated public opinion, which exasperated the government and pushed it on from excesses to insanity, irritated the tribune, blindfolded the elections, and finished by changing, five years afterward, the opposition of nineteen votes hostile to the Bourbons into a heterogeneous but formidable majority, in