"Your letter, monsieur, was very welcome in my Roman solitude: it has stayed my home-sickness, from which I was suffering badly. That complaint is nothing else than my years, which deprive my eyes of the power of seeing as they saw before: my own ruin is not great enough to find consolation in that of Rome. When I now wander alone amid all these remains of the centuries, they no longer serve me as a scale by which to measure time: I go back into the past, I see what I have lost and the end of the short future that lies before me; I count all the joys which I might have left, I find none of them; I make an effort to admire what I used to admire, and I admire it no longer. I come home to undergo my honours, overcome by the _sirocco_ and stabbed by the _tramontane._ There you have all my life, save only a tomb which I have not yet had the courage to visit. We pay great attention to crumbling monuments: we keep them up; we rid them of their plants and flowers; the women whom I had left young have become old, and the ruins have become young again: what would you have one do here? "Well, I assure you, monsieur, that I long only to return to my Rue d'Enfer, never again to leave it. I have fulfilled all my engagements towards my country and my friends. Once you and M. Bertin de Vaux have entered the State Council, I shall have nothing more to ask, for your talents will soon carry you higher. My retirement has, I hope, done a little to bring about the cessation of a formidable opposition; public liberty has been won for France for ever. My sacrifice must now end with my role in life. I ask nothing but to return to my 'Infirmary.' I have nothing but praise for this country; I have been admirably received, I have found a government full of tolerance and very well informed of affairs outside Italy; but, when all is said and done, nothing pleases me more than the idea of disappearing entirely from the world's scene: it is good to be preceded to the tomb by the silence which one will find there.