They were mistaken; they wasted their courage; they had reckoned on my lack of spirit, on my whining, on my toad-eating ambition, on my eagerness to plead guilty, to wait standing on those who had driven me out: they ill knew me. I retired without even claiming the salary which was due to me, without receiving a favour or a groat from the Court; I closed my door to whosoever had betrayed me; I refused the condoling crowd, and I took up arms. Then all dispersed; universal condemnation burst forth, and my game, which had at first seemed fine to the drawing-rooms and ante-chambers, appeared horrible. Should I not have done better, after my discharge, to be silent? Had not the brutality of the proceeding brought back the public to me? M. de Villèle has repeatedly said that the letter of dismissal was delayed; by this accident it had the misfortune to be handed to me only at the Palace. Perhaps this was so; but, when we play, we must calculate the chances of the game; we must, above all, not write to a friend of any worth a letter which we should be ashamed to address to a guilty footman whom we would put out of doors without ceremony or remorse. The irritation of the Villèle party against myself was the greater inasmuch as they wished to appropriate my work to themselves and as I had displayed ability in matters of which I had been supposed to know nothing. No doubt, with silence and moderation, as they said, I should have been lauded by the race who live in perpetual adoration of the portfolio; by doing penance for my innocence, I should have prepared my return to the Council. It would have been more in the common course of things; but that was taking me for the man I am not; that was suspecting me of a desire to recapture the helm of the State, the wish to make my way: a desire and a wish which would not occur to me in a hundred thousand years.