Those who had most loudly applauded me fell away; my presence was a reproach to them: prudent people find imprudence in those who yield to honour. There are times in which loftiness of soul is a real infirmity; no one understands it; it passes for a sort of narrowness of mind, for a prejudice, an unintelligent trick of education, a crotchet, a whim which interferes with the judgment: an honourable imbecility, perhaps, but a stupid helotism. What capacity can any one find in shutting your eyes, in remaining indifferent to the march of the century, to the movement of ideas, to the change of manners, to the progress of society? Is it not a deplorable mistake to attach to events an importance which they do not possess? Barricaded behind your narrow principles, your mind as limited as your judgment, you are like a man living at the back of a house, looking out only on a little yard, unaware of what happens in the street or of the noise to be heard outside. That is what a little independence reduces you to, an object of pity to the average man: as to the great minds with their affectionate pride and their haughty eyes, _oculos sublimes_[591], their compassionate disdain forgives you, because they know that "you cannot hear[592]." I therefore shrank back humbly into my literary career, a poor Pindar destined in my first Olympic to praise "the excellence of water," leaving wine to the happy. [Sidenote: I resign my Embassy.] Friendship put fresh heart into M. de Fontanes; Madame Bacciochi placed her kindness between her brother's anger and my resolution; M. de Talleyrand, through indifference or calculation, kept my resignation for several days before speaking of it: when he announced it to Bonaparte the latter had had time to reflect. On receiving from me the only direct sign of blame from an honest man who was not afraid to defy him, he uttered merely these two words: "Very well." Later, he said to his sister: "Were you very much alarmed for your friend?"