He was again and again imprisoned for his pamphlets; but he did not allow this to intimidate him. In his _Réponse aux anonymes qui ont écrit des lettres_ he writes: "It is not my cleverness, but my stupidity which has landed me in prison. I have put faith in the Charter (_la Charte_); I confess it to my shame.... If it had not been for the Charter I should never have dreamt of talking to the public of the things that occupy my thoughts. Robespierre, Barras, and the great Napoleon had taught me for twenty years to hold my tongue.... But then came the Charter, and people said to me: 'Speak, you are a free man; write away, print; the liberty of the press is secured along with every other liberty. What are you afraid of?' ... So I said, with my hat in my hand: 'Will you graciously grant us leave to dance in our market-place on Sunday?'.... 'Gendarmes--off with him to the lock-up. The longest possible term of imprisonment, a fine besides,' &c, &c." In another letter he writes with perfect calmness, and yet with biting severity, of the consequences of the celibacy of the priesthood. One of the priests who had inveighed most fiercely against the harmless peasant dances is discovered to be a seducer and murderer. Some years back he had murdered a woman who had been his mistress. In this case his fellow-priests attempted to throw the blame of the murder on her husband. Since then he has murdered and cut in pieces a young girl whom he had seduced. His superiors have sent him, unpunished, across the frontier, so that he is now an honoured preacher of the Gospel in Savoy. Courier shows what crimes, born of superstition and covetousness, are committed in districts where the inhabitants are so orthodox that nothing would induce them to eat meat on Friday; he says: "This is the true faith--honest, childlike, without suspicion of hypocrisy," and adds laconically: "They say that morality is founded upon this." The little satire entitled _Pièce diplomatique_ he was obliged to publish privately. It is a letter supposed to be written by King Louis to his cousin, Ferdinand of Spain, in 1823, after the war undertaken by France to restore that depraved Bourbon to his throne had been brought to a successful conclusion. In it Courier satirises Louis's attitude to the constitution. His cousin will not hear of a constitution, but Louis maintains that, far from being burdensome, it is agreeable and advantageous to the king.