To cut short my powerful adversary's unfair attack, I applied to that M. de Pommereul of whom I spoke to you at the time of my first arrival in Paris: he had become director-general of the State printing works and of the department of books. I asked him for leave to reprint the _Essai_ in its entirety. My correspondence and the result of that correspondence can be seen in the preface to the 1826 edition of the _Essai sur les Révolutions_, vol. II. of the Complete Works. Moreover, the Imperial Government was exceedingly right to refuse its assent to the reprinting of the work in its entirety: the _Essai_ was not, having regard both to the liberties and to the Legitimate Monarchy, a book which should be published while despotism and usurpation held sway. The police gave itself airs of impartiality by allowing something to be said in my favour, and it laughed while preventing me from doing the only thing capable of defending me. On the return of Louis XVIII., the _Essai_ was exhumed anew: as, in the time of the Empire, they had wished to make use of it against me in a political respect, so, in the days of the Restoration, they tried to plead it against me in a religious respect. I have made so complete an apology for my errors in the notes to the new edition of the _Essai historique_, that there is nothing left wherewith to reproach me. Posterity will come and will pronounce on both book and commentary, if such old trash is still able to interest it. I venture to hope that it will judge the _Essai_ as my grey head has judged it; for, as one advances in life, one assumes the equity of the future towards which one approaches. The book and the notes place me before the eyes of men such as I was at the commencement of my career and such as I am at the close of that career. [Sidenote: The _Essai_ reprinted.] Moreover, this work which I have treated with pitiless rigour offers the compendium of my existence as a poet, a moralist and a future politician. The pith of the work is overflowing, the boldness of the opinions urged as far as it will go. It must needs be admitted that, in the various roads upon which I have embarked, I have never been guided by prejudice, that I have never been blind in whatsoever cause, that no interest has led me on, that the sides which I have taken have always been those of my choice.