I received the following note from M. Daru: "SAINT-CLOUD, 28 _April_ 1811. "I have the honour to inform Monsieur de Chateaubriand that, when he has the time or occasion to come to Saint-Cloud, I shall be able to return to him the speech which he was good enough to entrust to me. I take this opportunity to repeat to him the assurance of the high consideration with which I have the honour to salute him. "DARU." I went to Saint-Cloud. M. Daru returned me the manuscript, crossed out in places, and scored _ab irato_ with parentheses and pencil marks by Bonaparte: the lion's claw had been dug in everywhere, and I experienced a sort of pleasure of irritation in imagining that I felt it in my side. M. Daru did not conceal Napoleon's anger from me; but he told me, that, if I kept the peroration, with the exception of a few words, and changed almost the whole of the rest, I should be received with great applause. The speech had been copied out at the palace; some passages had been suppressed and others interpolated. Not long after, it appeared in the provinces printed in that fashion. This speech is one of the best proofs of the independence of my opinions and the consistency of my principles. M. Suard, who was free and firm, said that, if it had been read in the open Academy, it would have brought down the rafters of the hall with applause. Can you, indeed, imagine the warm praises of liberty uttered in the midst of the servility of the Empire? I had kept the scored manuscript with religious care; ill-fortune willed that, when I left the Infirmerie de Marie-Thérèse, it was burnt with a heap of papers. Nevertheless the readers of these Memoirs shall not be deprived of it: one of my colleagues had the generosity to take a copy of it; here it is: [Sidenote: My inaugural speech.]