One of the two handsome children on whose behalf Charlotte had asked me to interest myself, in 1822, has just been to see me in Paris: he is now Captain Sutton; he is married to a charming young wife, and he has told me that his mother has been very ill and has lately spent a winter in London. I embarked at Dover on the 8th of September 1822, at the same port from which, twenty-two years earlier, "M. La Sagne of Neuchâtel" had set sail. Between that first departure to the moment of writing, thirty-nine years have elapsed. When a man looks upon or listens to his past life, he seems to perceive on a deserted sea the track of a vessel that has disappeared; he seems to hear the tolling of a bell of which the old tower is not in sight. Here, in the order of dates, comes the place of the _Congrès de Vérone_[226], which I have published in two volumes apart. Should any one, by chance, feel a wish to read it, he can find it everywhere. My Spanish War, the great political event of my life, was a gigantic undertaking. The Legitimacy was for the first time about to burn powder under the White Flag, to fire its first gun-shot after those gun-shots of the Empire which will be audible to the utmost posterity. To bestride Spain with one step, to succeed on the same soil where formerly a conqueror's arms had encountered reverses, to do in six months what he was unable to do in seven years: who could have laid claim to that prodigy? That is, however, what I did; but by how many curses has not my head been smitten at the gaming-table at which the Restoration had seated me! I had before me a France hostile to the Bourbons, and two great foreign ministers, Prince von Metternich and Mr. Canning. Not a day passed but I received letters prophesying a catastrophe, for the war with Spain was not at all popular, either in France or in Europe. Indeed, some time after my successes in the Peninsula, my fall was not long in arriving. In our ardour, after the receipt of the telegraphic dispatch announcing the deliverance of the King of Spain, we ministers hastened to the Palace. There I had a presentiment of my fall; I received a bucketful of cold water over my ears which brought me back to my habitual humility. The King and Monsieur did not notice us. Madame la Duchesse d'Angoulême, distracted by her husband's triumph, had eyes for nobody. That immortal victim wrote a letter on Ferdinand's deliverance ending in this exclamation, sublime in the mouth of a daughter of Louis XVI.: "So it is proved that one can save an unfortunate king!" On the Sunday, I returned, before the meeting of the council, to pay my court to the Royal Family; the august Princess spoke an obliging sentence to each of my colleagues: to me she did not address a word. I did not, certainly, deserve such an honour. The silence of the orphan of the Temple can never be ungrateful: Heaven has a right to the worship of the earth and owes nothing to any one.