"Sire, and this is the occasion solemnly to protest it: all your ministers, all the members of your Council, are inviolably attached to the principles of a wise liberty; they derive from you that love of laws, of order and of justice without which there can be no happiness for a people. Sire, let us be permitted to say that we are ready to shed the last drop of our blood for you, to follow you to the ends of the earth, to share with you the tribulations which it will please the Almighty to send you, because we believe before God that you will maintain the Constitution which you have given to your people, and that the sincerest wish of your royal heart is the liberty of Frenchmen. Had it been otherwise, Sire, we would all have died at your feet in defense of your sacred person; but we would have been only your soldiers, we would have ceased to be your councillors and your ministers.... "Sire, at this moment we share your royal sadness; there is not one of your councillors and ministers who would not give up his life to prevent the invasion of France. You, Sire, are a Frenchman, we are Frenchmen! Alive to the honour of our country, proud of the glory of our arms, admirers of the courage of our soldiers, we would be willing, in the midst of your battalions, to shed the last drop of our blood to bring them back to their duty or to share lawful triumphs with them. We can only look with the deepest sorrow upon the ills that are ready to break over our country." Thus, at Ghent, did I propose to add to the Charter that which it still lacked, while displaying my sorrow at the new invasion which was threatening France: nevertheless, I was only an exile whose wishes were in contradiction with the facts which could again open the gates of my country to me. Those pages were written in the States of the allied sovereigns, among kings and Emigrants who detested the liberty of the press, in the midst of armies marching to conquest of whom we were, so to speak, the prisoners: these circumstances perhaps add some strength to the feelings which I venture to express. [Sidenote: The _Rapport au Roi._]