M. de Vaublanc[269] and M. Capelle[270] joined us. The former used to say that he had some of everything in his portfolio. Do you want some Montesquieu? Here you are. Some Bossuet? Here it is! In proportion as the game seemed about to take a different turn, more travellers arrived. The Abbé Louis and M. le Comte Beugnot alighted at the inn where I was lodging. Madame de Chateaubriand was suffering from terrible fits of choking, and I was sitting up with her. The two new-comers installed themselves in a room separated from my wife's only by a thin partition; it was impossible not to hear, unless by stopping one's ears: between eleven and twelve at night the new arrivals raised their voices. The Abbé Louis, who spoke like a wolf and in jerks, was saying to M. Beugnot: "You, a minister? You'll never be one again! You have committed one stupidity after the other!" I could not clearly hear M. le Comte Beugnot's answer, but he spoke of thirty-three millions left behind in the Royal Treasury. The abbé, apparently in anger, pushed a chair, which fell down. Through the uproar I caught these words: "The Duc d'Angoulême? He'll have to buy his national property at the gates of Paris. I shall sell what remains of the State forests. I shall cut down everything. The elms on the highroads, the Bois de Boulogne, the Champs-Élysées: what's the use of all that, eh?" Brutality formed M. Louis' principal merit; his talent lay in a stupid love of material interests. If the Minister of Finance drew the forests after him, he had doubtless a different secret from that of Orpheus, who "made the woods go after him with his fail; fiddling." In the slang of the time, M. Louis was known as a "special" man; his speciality of finance had led him to accumulate the tax-payers' money in the Treasury in order to let it be taken by Bonaparte. Napoleon had had no use for this special man, who was in no sense an unique man, and who was at the most good enough for the Directory. The Abbé Louis had gone to Ghent to claim his office; he was in very good favour with M. de Talleyrand, with whom he had solemnly officiated at the first federation in the Champ de Mars: the bishop was the celebrant, the Abbé Louis the deacon, and the Abbé Desrenaudes[271] the sub-deacon. M. de Talleyrand, recollecting this admirable profanation, used to say to the Baron Louis: "Abbé, you were very fine as the deacon in the Champ de Mars!" We endured this shame under the great tyranny of Bonaparte: ought we to have endured it later? The "Most Christian" King had screened himself from any reproach of bigotry: he owned in his Council a married bishop, M. de Talleyrand; a priest living in concubinage, M. Louis; a non-practising abbé, M. de Montesquiou.