Parties acted without thinking of the form of government which they had adopted; every one spoke of the Constitution, of liberty, of equality, of the right of peoples, and no one wanted them; fashionable verbiage: one asked, without thinking, for news of the Charter, hoping all the time that it would soon die the death. Liberals and Royalists leant towards absolute government, modified by our habits: such is the temper and trend of France. Material interests prevailed: they did not want, they said, to disown what had been done during the Revolution; each was burdened with his own life and claimed the right to load his neighbour with it: evil, they asserted, had become an element in public life which must thenceforth combine with the governments and enter as a vital principle into society. My crotchet, relative to a Charter set in motion by religious and moral action, was the cause of the ill-will which certain parties have borne me: for the Royalists, I was too much attached to liberty; for the Revolutionaries, I had too great a scorn for crimes. Had I not been there, to my great detriment, to make myself the school-master of constitutionalism, the Ultras and the Jacobins would from the earliest days have put the Charter into the pocket of their fleury dress-coats or their carmagnoles _à la Cassius._ M. de Talleyrand had no liking for M. Fouché; M. Fouché detested and, strangest of all, despised M. de Talleyrand: it was difficult to achieve that success. M. de Talleyrand, who at first would have been pleased not to be coupled to M. Fouché, feeling that the latter was inevitable, consented to the proposal; he did not perceive that, with the Charter (especially when he was united with the man of the Lyons grape-shot), he was hardly more possible than Fouché. Promptly what I had declared was verified: they obtained no profit from the admission of the Duc d'Otrante, they obtained nothing but opprobrium; the approaching shadow of the Chambers was enough to cause the disappearance of ministers too much exposed to the plain-speaking of the tribune. My opposition was of no avail: according to the custom of weak characters, the King closed the sitting without deciding anything; the Order in Council was to be settled at the Château d'Arnouville. No council, strictly speaking, was held at this last residence: only the intimates and those associated with the secret were assembled. M. de Talleyrand, having distanced us, entered into intelligence with his friends. The Duke of Wellington arrived: I saw him drive past in a calash; the plumes of his hat waved in the air; he had come to confer with M. Fouché and M. de Talleyrand upon France, as a twofold present which the Battle of Waterloo was making to our country. When it was represented to him that the regicide of M. le Duc d'Otrante was perhaps a drawback, he replied: "That's a trifle!"