The last-named, a man as feverish as a consumptive, gifted with a certain glibness of speech, had a narrow and disparaging mind, a malignant heart, a sour character. One day, when I had made a speech at the Luxembourg on behalf of the liberty of the press, the descendant of Clovis, passing in front of me, who went back only to the Breton Mormoran, caught me a great blow with his knee in my thigh, which was not in good taste; I gave him one back, which was not polite: we played at the Duc de La Rochefoucauld and the Coadjutor[272]. The Abbé de Montesquiou humorously called M. de Lally-Tolendal "an English beast." [Sidenote: The fish dinners at Ghent.] In the rivers at Ghent they catch a very dainty white fish: we used, _tutti quanti_, to go to eat this good fish in a suburban road-side inn, while waiting for the battles and the end of empires. M. Laborie never failed us at our meetings: I had first met him at Savigny when, fleeing from Bonaparte, he came in at Madame de Beaumont's by one window and made his way out by another. Indefatigable at work, renewing his errands as often as his bills, as fond of doing services as others are of receiving them, he has been calumniated: calumny is not the impeachment of the calumniated, but the excuse of the calumniator. I have seen men grow tired of the promises in which M. Laborie was so rich; but why? Illusions are like torture: they always help to pass an hour or two[273]. I have often led by the head, with a golden bridle, old hacks of memory unable to stand on their legs, which I took for young and frisky hopes. I also met M. Mounier[274] at the white-fish dinners, a sensible and upright man. M. Guizot deigned to honour us with his presence[275]. A _Moniteur_[276] had been started at Ghent: my report to the King of the 12th of May[277], inserted in that journal, proves that my feelings on the liberty of the press and on foreign domination have at all times been the same. I can quote the following passages to-day; they in no way belie my life: "SIRE, "You were preparing to crown the institutions of which you had laid the foundation-stone.... You had fixed a period for the commencement of the hereditary peerage; the ministry would have gained greater unity; the ministers I would have become members of the two Chambers, according to the true spirit of the Charter; a law would have been brought in to allow the election of a member of the Chamber of Deputies before the age of forty, so that citizens might have had a real political career. It was proposed to discuss a penal code for press offenses, after the adoption of which law the press would have been entirely free, for that freedom is inseparable from all representative government....