After the second return of the King and the final disappearance of Bonaparte, the Ministry being in the hands of M. le Duc d'Otrante and M. le Prince de Talleyrand, I was appointed president of the electoral college of the Department of the Loiret. The elections of 1815 gave the King the _Chambre introuvable._[2] I was carrying all the votes at Orleans, when I received the Order which called me to the House of Peers[3]. My active career had hardly commenced, when it suddenly changed its course: what would it have been if I had been sent to the Elective Chamber? It is fairly probable that that career would, in the event of my success, have ended in the Ministry of the Interior, instead of taking me to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. My habits and manners were more in touch with the peerage, and, although the latter became hostile to me from the first moment, by reason of my Liberal opinions, it is nevertheless certain that my doctrines concerning the liberty of the press and against the vassalage to foreigners gave the Noble Chamber the popularity which it enjoyed so long as it suffered my opinions. I received, at my entrance, the only honour which my colleagues ever did me during my fifteen years' residence in their midst: I was appointed one of the four secretaries for the session of 1816. Lord Byron met with no more favour when he appeared in the House of Lords, and he left it for good: I ought to have returned to my deserts. My first appearance in the tribune was to make a speech on the irremovability of the judges[4]: I applauded the principle, but censured its immediate application. At the Revolution of 1830, the members of the Left who were most devoted to that revolution wished to suspend the irremovability for a time. On the 22nd of February 1816, the Duc de Richelieu brought us the autograph will of the Queen. I ascended the tribune, and said: "He who has preserved for us the will of Marie-Antoinette[5] had bought the property of Montboisier: himself one of Louis XVI.'s judges, he raised in that property a monument to the memory of the defender of Louis XVI., and himself engraved on that monument an epitaph in French verse in praise of M. de Malesherbes. This astonishing impartiality shows that all is misplaced in the moral world." On the 12th of March 1816, the question of the ecclesiastical pensions[6] was discussed: "You would," I said, "refuse an allowance to the poor vicar who devotes the remainder of his days to the altar, and you would accord pensions to Joseph Lebon[7], who struck off so many heads; to François Chabot[8], who asked for a law against the Emigrants of so simple a character that a child might lead them to the guillotine; to Jacques Roux[9], who, refusing at the Temple to receive Louis XVI.'s will, replied to the unfortunate monarch: "'My only business is to take you to your death.'"