But how to spend the days of grace that had been granted me? I might have lived or died promptly by my sword: I was forbidden to use it. What remained? A pen? It was neither known nor proved, and I was ignorant of its power. Would my innate taste for letters, the poems of my childhood, the sketches of my travels suffice to attract the public attention? The idea of writing a work on the comparative Revolutions had occurred to me; I turned it over in my mind as a subject more suited to the interests of the day; but who would undertake the printing of a manuscript with none to extol its merits, and who would support me during the composition of that manuscript? Even if I had but a few days to spend on earth, I must nevertheless have some means of support for those few days. My thirty louis, already seriously curtailed, could not go very far, and, in addition to my own distress, I had to support the general distress of the Emigration. My companions in London all had occupations: some had embarked in the coal trade, others with their wives made straw hats, others again taught the French which they did not know. They were all merry. The fault of our nation, its frivolity, had at that moment changed into virtue. They laughed in Fortune's face: that thieving wench was quite abashed at carrying off something which she was not asked to restore. * [Sidenote: Peltier.] Peltier, author of the _Domine salvum fac regem_[160] and principal editor of the _Actes des Apôtres_, continued his Parisian enterprise in London. He was not precisely vicious: but he was devoured by a vermin of small faults of which it was impossible to purify him; he was a rake, a good-for-nothing, earned a great deal of money and spent it as lavishly, was at the same time the adherent of the Legitimacy and the ambassador of the black King Christophe[161] to George III., diplomatic correspondent of M. le Comte de "Limonade," and drank up in champagne the salary which was paid him in sugar[162]. This sort of M. Violet playing the grand airs of the Revolution on a pocket violin came to see me, and offered his services as a Breton. I spoke to him of my plan of the _Essai_; he loudly approved of it: "It will be superb!" he exclaimed, and offered me a room in the house of his printer, Baylis, who would print the work piece by piece as I wrote it. Deboffe the bookseller should have the sale of it; he, Peltier, would trumpet it in his paper, the _Ambigu_, while one might obtain a footing in the London _Courrier français_, the editorship of which was soon to be transferred to M. de Montlosier[163]. Peltier never entertained a doubt: he spoke of getting me the Cross of St. Louis for my siege of Thionville. My Gil Blas, tall, lean, lanky, with powdered hair and a bald forehead, always shouting and joking, put his round hat on one ear, took me by the arm, and carried me off to Baylis the printer, where, without any ceremony, he hired a room for me at a guinea a month.