"I have carried the war into my enemies' camp; I have not gone to bivouac in the past under the old banner of the dead, a banner which has not been inglorious, but which droops by the flag-staff that supports it, because no breath of life is there to raise it. Were I to move the dust of thirty-five Capets, I should not draw from it an argument which should be as much as listened to. The idolatry of a name is abolished; monarchy is no longer a tenet of religious belief: it is a political form which is preferable at this moment to every other, because it has the greatest tendency to reconcile order with liberty. "Useless Cassandra, how often have I wearied the Throne and the country[318] with my disregarded warnings! It only remains for me to sit down on the last fragment of the shipwreck which I have so often foretold. In misfortune I acknowledge every species of power except that of absolving me from my oaths of allegiance. It is also my duty to make my life uniform: after all that I have done, said and written for the Bourbons, I should be the meanest of wretches if I denied them at the moment when, for the third and last time, they are on the road to exile. "Fear I leave to those generous royalists who have never sacrificed a coin or a place to their loyalty; to those champions of the Altar and the Throne who lately treated me as a renegade, an apostate and a revolutionary. Pious libellers, the renegade now calls upon you! Come, then, and stammer out a word, a single word, with him for the unfortunate master who loaded you with his gifts and whom you have ruined! Instigators of _coups d'État_, preachers of constituent power, where are you? You hide yourselves in the mire from under which you gallantly raised your heads to calumniate the faithful servants of the King; your silence to-day is worthy of your language of yesterday. Let all those doughty knights, whose projected exploits have caused the descendants of Henry IV. to be driven from their throne at the point of the pitchfork, tremble now as they crouch under the three-coloured cockade: it is natural that they should do so. The noble colours which they display will protect their persons, but will not cover their cowardice.