Because of the resemblance of opinions, then very keen, an intimacy had been established between the minorities of the two Chambers. France was learning representative government. As I had been foolish enough to take it literally and make a real passion of it, to my prejudice, I supported those who took it up, without troubling my head as to whether their opposition was not prompted by human motives rather than by a pure love like that which I felt for the Charter: not that I was a simpleton, but I idolized my lady-love and would have gone through fire to carry her off in my arms. It was during this constitutional attack that I came to know M. de Villèle[31], in 1816. He was calmer; he overcame his ardour; he, too, aimed at conquering liberty, but he laid siege to it according to rule. He opened the trenches methodically: I, who wanted to carry the place by assault, advanced to the escalade, and often found myself flung back into the ditch. I met M. de Villèle first at the Duchesse de Lévis'. He became the leader of the Royalist Opposition in the Elective Chamber, as I was in the Hereditary Chamber. He had as a friend his colleague M. de Corbière[32]. The latter never left his side, and people used to speak of "Villèle and Corbière" as they speak of "Orestes and Pylades" or "Euryalus and Nisus." To enter into fastidious details about persons whose names one will not know to-morrow would be an idiotic vanity. Obscure and tedious commotions, which one considers of immense interest and which interest nobody, bygone intrigues, which have decided no important event, should be left to those devoutly happy persons who imagine themselves to be, or to have been, the object of the world's attention. Nevertheless, there were proud moments in which my contentions with M. de Villèle seemed to me personally like the dissensions of Sulla and Marius, of Cæsar and Pompey. Together with the other members of the Opposition, we went pretty often to spend the evening in deliberation at M. Piet's[33], in the Rue Thérèse. We arrived looking extremely ugly, and sat down round a room lighted by a flaring lamp. In this legislative fog, we talked of the Bill introduced, of the motion to be made, of the friend to be pushed into the secretaryship, the questorship, the different committees. We were not unlike the assemblies of the early Christians, as depicted by the enemies of the Faith: we broached the worst news; we said that things were going to turn, that Rome would be troubled by divisions, that our armies would be routed.