Had I conjectured the result, I should certainly have refrained; the majority which voted the phrase of refusal to co-operate would not have voted it, if they had foreseen the consequence of their vote. None seriously desired a catastrophe, except a few men apart. There was at first only a riot, and the Legitimacy alone transformed it into a revolution: when the moment had come, it lacked the intelligence, the prudence, the resolution that could still save it. After all, it is a monarchy fallen; many more will fall: I owed it only my fidelity; it will have that ever. Devoted to the early adversities of the Monarchy, I have consecrated myself to its final misfortunes: ill-fortune will always have for me a second. I have given back all, places, pensions, honours; and, in order that I might have nothing more to ask of anybody, I have pledged my coffin. O stern and rigid judges, virtuous and infallible Royalists, who mixed an oath with your riches as you mix salt with the meats of your banquets to preserve them, have a little indulgence in respect of my past bitternesses; I am expiating them to-day after my fashion, which is not yours. Do you think that, at the evening hour, at the hour at which the toiler seeks repose, he does not feel the weight of life, when that weight is cast back upon his shoulders? And yet, I need not have borne the burden. I saw Philip in his palace, from the 1st to the 6th of August 1830, as I shall tell when the time comes; it but lay with me to hearken to generous words. Later, if I had been able to repent of doing right, it was still possible for me to retract the first impulse of my conscience. M. Benjamin Constant, the man so powerful then, wrote to me on the 20th of September[335]: "I would much rather write to you of yourself than of myself, the thing would have more importance. I should like to be able to speak to you of the loss which you are causing all France to sustain by withdrawing yourself from her destinies, you who have exercised so noble and wholesome an influence upon her. But it would be indiscreet of me to treat personal questions in this way, and I am bound, while groaning like every Frenchman, to respect your scruples." My duties not yet seeming to me to be consummated, I have defended the widow and the orphan, I have undergone the trial and the prison which Bonaparte, even in his greatest angers, spared me. I stand forth between my resignation on the death of the Duc d'Enghien and my cry on behalf of the plundered child; I rest upon a prince shot dead and a prince in banishment; they sustain my old arms entwined in their feeble arms: O Royalists, are you so well attended? [Sidenote: My sacrifices.]