[Sidenote: Death of Louis XVIII.] The King's illness called me back to Paris. The King died on the 16th of September, scarcely four months after my dismissal. My pamphlet, entitled _Le Roi est mort: vive le roi!_ in which I hailed the new Sovereign, performed for Charles X. what my pamphlet _De Bonaparte et des Bourbons_ had performed for Louis XVIII. I went to fetch Madame de Chateaubriand at Neuchâtel, and we came to Paris to live in the Rue du Regard. Charles X. made his reign popular at its commencement by abolishing the censorship; the coronation took place in the spring of 1825. "Already the bees were beginning to hum, the birds to warble, and the lambs to gambol on the green." Among my papers I find the following pages written at Rheims: "RHEIMS, 26 _May_ 1825. "The King arrives the day after to-morrow; he will be crowned on Sunday the 29th; I shall see him place on his head a crown of which no one thought, in 1814, when I raised my voice. I have contributed to opening the doors of France to him; I have given him defenders, by bringing the Spanish War to a satisfactory issue; I have caused the Charter to be adopted, and I have succeeded in finding an army, the only two things with which the King can reign at home and abroad: what part is reserved for me at the coronation? That of an outlaw. I come as one of the crowd to receive a ribbon, distributed broadcast, which I do not even hold from Charles X. The people whom I have served and placed turn their backs on me. The King will hold my hands in his, he will see me at his feet, when I take my oath, without being moved, even as he sees me without interest recommencing my poverty. Does that make a difference to me? No. Freed from the obligation of going to the Tuileries, I am compensated for everything by independence. "I am writing this page of my Memoirs in the room in which I am forgotten amid all the noise. I have this morning visited Saint-Remi and the Cathedral decorated with stained paper. I shall not have had a clear idea of this latter edifice, except from the decorations of Schiller's _Joan of Arc_, as played before me in Berlin: operatic machinery has shown me, on the banks of the Spree, what operatic machinery hides from me, on the banks of the Vesle; for the rest, I have taken my diversion among the old dynasties, from Clovis[250], with his Franks and his pigeon descending from Heaven, to Charles VII.[251], with Joan of Arc[252]." Je suis venu de mon pays Pas plus haut qu'une botte, Avecque mi, avecque mi, Avecque ma marmotte[253]. "'A sou-piece, sir, if you please!' [Sidenote: At Rheims.] That is what a little Savoyard, just arrived at Rheims, sang to me returning from my walk. "'And what have you come here for?' I asked him. "'I have come to the coronation, sir.' "'With your marmot?'