The Abbé de Montesquiou being in London, Louis XVIII. appointed me Minister of the Interior _ad interim._[262] My correspondence with the "departments" did not give me much to do; I easily kept up my correspondence with the prefects, sub-prefects, mayors and deputy-mayors of our good towns, on the inner side of our frontiers; I did not repair the roads much, and I let the steeples tumble down; my budget hardly enriched me; I had no secret funds; only, by a crying abuse, I was a "pluralist:" I was still His Majesty's Minister Plenipotentiary to the King of Sweden, who, like his fellow-townsman Henry IV.[263], reigned by right of conquest, if not by right of birth. We discoursed round a table covered with a green cloth in the King's closet. M. de Lally-Tolendal, who was, I think, Minister of Public Instruction, delivered speeches even more voluminous and more inflated than his cheeks: he quoted his illustrious ancestors the Kings of Ireland and muddled up his father's[264] trial with those of Charles I. and Louis XVI. He refreshed himself in the evening, after the tears, the sweat and the words which he had shed at the council, with a lady who had come all the way from Paris out of enthusiasm for his genius; he virtuously strove to cure her, but his eloquence betrayed his virtue and drove the dart more deeply. Madame la Duchesse de Duras had come to join M. le Duc de Duras among the exiles. I will speak no more ill of misfortune, because I have spent three months with that admirable woman, talking of all that upright minds and hearts can find in a conformity of tastes, ideas, principles and feelings. Madame de Duras was ambitious for me: she alone saw at once what I might be worth in political life; she always deplored the envy and short-sightedness which kept me removed from the King's counsels; but she even much more deplored the obstacles which my character placed in the way of my fortune: she scolded me, she wanted to correct me of my indifference, my candour, my ingenuousness, and to make me adopt habits of courtierism which she herself could not endure. Nothing, perhaps, leads to greater attachment and gratitude than to feel one's self under the patronage of a superior friendship which, by virtue of its ascendancy over society, passes off your defects as good qualities, your imperfections as an attraction. A man protects you through his worth, a woman through your worth: that is why, of those two empires, one is so hateful, the other so sweet.