Changes in the world--The years 1815 and 1816--I am made a peer of France--My first appearance in the tribune--Various speeches--The _Monarchie selon la Charte_--Louis XVIII.--M. Decazes--I am struck off the list of ministers of State--I sell my books and my Valley--My speeches continued, in 1817 and 1818--The Piet meetings--The _Conservateur_--Concerning the morality of material interests and that of duty--The year 1820--Death of the Duc de Berry--Birth of the Duc de Bordeaux--The market-women of Bordeaux--I cause M. de Villèle and M. de Corbière to take office for the first time--My letter to the Duc de Richelieu--Note from the Duc de Richelieu and my reply--Notes from M. de Polignac--Letters from M. de Montmorency and M. Pasquier--I am appointed Ambassador to Berlin--I leave for that embassy. To fall back from Bonaparte and the Empire to that which followed them is to fall from reality into nothingness, from the summit of a mountain into a gulf. Did not everything finish with Napoleon? Ought I to have spoken of anything else? What person can possess any interest beside him? Of whom and of what can there be any question after such a man? Dante alone had the right to associate himself with the great poets whom he meets in the regions of another life. How can one speak of Louis XVIII. in the stead of the Emperor? I blush when I think that, at the present moment, I have to cant about a crowd of petty creatures, of whom I myself am one, dubious and nocturnal beings that we were on a stage from which the great sun had disappeared. The Bonapartists themselves had shrivelled up. Their members had become bent and shrunk; the soul was lacking to the new universe so soon as Bonaparte withdrew his breath; objects faded from view from the moment when they were no longer illuminated by the light which had given them colour and relief. At the commencement of these Memoirs, I had only myself to speak of: well, there is always a sort of paramountcy in man's individual solitude. Later, I was surrounded by miracles: those miracles kept up my voice; but at this present moment there is no more conquest of Egypt, no more Battles of Marengo, Austerlitz and Jena, no more retreat from Russia, no more invasion of France, capture of Paris, return from Elba, Battle of Waterloo, funeral at St. Helena: what remains? Portraits to which only the genius of Molière could lend the gravity of comedy!