It was from Mons itself, amid all his worries, that the Prince de Bénévent sent M. de Perray to Naples to receive the millions of one of his Viennese bargains. M. de Blacas was at the same time travelling with the Naples Embassy in his pocket, and some other millions which the generous exile of Ghent had given him at Mons. I had kept on good terms with M. de Blacas, precisely because everybody detested him; I had incurred M. de Talleyrand's friendship for my fidelity to a whim of his mood; Louis XVIII. had positively called me about his person, and I preferred the baseness of a faithless man to the King's favour: it was only too just that I should receive the reward of my stupidity, that I should be abandoned by all for having tried to serve all. I returned to France without the wherewithal to pay my journey, while treasures poured down upon those in disgrace: I deserved that correction. It is very well to fence one's way as a poor knight when the whole world is cased in gold; but still one must not make enormous mistakes: had I remained with the King, the combination of the Talleyrand and Fouché Ministry would have become almost impossible; had the Restoration commenced with a moral and honourable ministry, all the combinations of the future might have been different. My carelessness of my own person deceived me as to the importance of facts: the majority of men have the fault of reckoning themselves too high; I have the fault of not reckoning myself high enough: I wrapped myself in my habitual disdain of my fortune; I ought to have seen that the fortune of France was at that moment linked with that of my small destinies: such entanglements are very common in history. * Leaving Mons at last, I arrived at Cateau-Cambrésis; M. de Talleyrand joined me there: we seemed as though we had come to remake the treaty of peace of 1559 between Henry II. of France[342] and Philip II. of Spain[343]. At Cambrai it appeared that the Marquis de La Suze, a quarter-master of the time of Fénelon, had disposed of the billets of Madame de Lévis, Madame de Chateaubriand and myself. We remained in the street, in the midst of the bon-fires, of the crowd circulating around us, and of the inhabitants crying, "Long live the King!" A student, hearing that I was there, took us to his mother's house. The friends of the different monarchies of France were beginning to make their appearance; they were not coming to Cambrai for the league against Venice[344], but to combine against the new Constitutions; they were hastening to lay at the King's feet their successive loyalties and their hatred of the Charter: a passport which they considered necessary with Monsieur; I and two or three reasonable Gileses already smelt of Jacobinism. On the 28th of June, appeared the Declaration of Cambrai. In it the King said: "I wish to remove from my person only those men whose reputation is a subject of grief to France and of dismay to Europe."