"None of the Greeks has had the same good fortune as yourself: that of being selected by the benevolent society which interests itself in us to learn the duties of man. I gave you birth; but these commendable persons will give you an education which really makes a man. Be very docile to these new fathers, if you wish to give comfort to him who gave you the light. Farewell. "Your father, "C. CANARIS." "NAUPLIA, 5 _September_ 1825. [Sidenote: The Greek Committee.] I have kept the dual text as the reward of the Greek Committee. Republican Greece had testified her particular regret when I left the ministry. Madame Récamier wrote to me from Naples, on the 29th of October 1824: "I have received a letter from Greece which has made a long round before reaching me. In it I find some lines on yourself which I want you to see; here they are: "'The decree of the 6th of June has come to our ears; it has produced the liveliest sensation on our leaders. Their best-founded hopes lying in the generosity of France, they are anxiously asking themselves what the removal may forebode of a man whose character promised them a support.' "If I am not mistaken, this testimony ought to please you. I enclose the letter: the first page concerned only myself." Soon you will read the life of Madame Récamier: you will know how sweet it was to me to receive a remembrance of the land of the Muses through a woman who would have adorned it. As for the note from M. Molé, given above, it alludes to the bargain which I had made relating to the publication of my Complete Works. This arrangement ought, in fact, to have ensured the peace of my life; it nevertheless turned badly for me, although it was profitable to the publishers to whom M. Ladvocat, after his bankruptcy, left my Works[275]. In point of Plutus or Pluto (the mythologists confound the two), I am like Alcestes: I always see the fatal bark; like William Pitt, and that is my excuse, I am a spendthrift, a _panier percé_: but I do not myself make the hole in the basket. At the conclusion of the General Preface to my Works, 1826, vol. I., I address France in these words: "O France, 'my dear country and my first love,' one of thy sons, at the end of his career, is collecting beneath thy eyes the claims which he may have to thy good-will. If he can do no more for thee, thou canst do all for him, by declaring that his attachment for thy religion, for thy King, for thy liberties has been pleasing to thee. Fair and illustrious mother-land, I would have desired a little glory only to augment thine own."