"Madame Adelaide was present as on the former occasion; and the duchess now described more specifically the favours with which the Duke of Orleans proposed to honour me. She dwelt on what she called my sway over public opinion; the sacrifices I had made, and the aversion which Charles X. and his family had always shown to me in spite of my services. She said to me, that if I would accept the portfolio of foreign affairs, his Royal Highness would be too happy to replace me in that situation; but that possibly I would prefer returning to Rome, and that she would greatly rejoice at that appointment, for the interests of our holy religion. "'Madam,' I answered with some degree of vivacity, 'I see that his Royal Highness has taken his line; that he has weighed the consequences; that he is prepared to meet the years of misery and perils he will have to traverse. I have therefore nothing to say on that head--I come not here to fail in respect to the blood of the Bourbons; I owe besides nothing but gratitude and respect to _Madame_. Leaving apart, then, those great objections, founded on reason and principle, I pray her Royal Highness to allow me to explain what personally concerns myself. "'She has had the condescension to speak of what she calls my power over general opinion. Well, if that power is well founded, on what is it founded? Is it on anything else but the public esteem: and should I not lose it the moment I changed my colours? The Duke of Orleans supposes he would in me acquire a support: instead of that he would gain only a miserable maker of phrases, whose voice would no longer be listened to--a renegade, on whom every one would have a right to throw dust and to spit in his face. To the hesitating words which he could pronounce in favour of Louis Philippe, they would oppose the entire volumes he had written in favour of the fallen family. Is it not I, Madam, who have written the pamphlet of _Buonaparte and the Bourbons_; the articles on the arrival of Louis XVIII. at Compiègne; the relation of the Royal Council at Ghent, and the _History of the Life and Death of the Duke de Berri_? I know not that I have written a single page where the name of our ancient kings is not either mentioned or alluded to, and where they are not environed by the protestations of my love and fidelity--a thing which marks strength of principle the more strongly, as _Madame_ knows that, as an individual, I put no faith in princes. At the thought even of desertion, the colour mounts to my cheeks. The day after my treachery, I should go to throw myself into the Seine. I implore _Madame_ to forgive the vehemence of my language: I am penetrated with her goodness: I shall ever preserve a profound and grateful remembrance of it;