"There are high barons of the Throne and the Altar who have not betrayed the Ordinances: no! But the insufficiency of the means employed to carry out the Ordinances has excited their spleen: indignant to find shortcomings in despotism, they have gone to seek another antechamber. It is impossible for me to share their indignation and their abode. "There are men of conscience who are perjurers only to be perjurers; who, while yielding to force, are none the less for the right: they weep over that poor Charles X., whom they first dragged to his ruin by their advice and then put to death by their oaths; but, if ever he or his House revive, they will be very thunder-bolts of legitimacy. As for me, I have always been devoted to death, and I am the funeral procession of the Old Monarchy, like the poor man's dog. "Lastly, there are trusty knights who have dispensations from honour and permits of disloyalty in their pocket: I have none. "I was the man of the _possible_ Restoration, of the Restoration accompanied by every kind of liberty. That Restoration took me for an enemy; it is ruined: I must undergo its fate. Shall I go to attach the few years that remain to me to a new fortune, like the hems of dresses which women drag from court to court for all the world to tread upon? At the head of the young generations, I should be suspect; following them, is not my place. I am fully aware that none of my faculties has aged; I understand my century better than ever; I penetrate more boldly into the future than anybody; but necessity has pronounced its decree; to end his life opportunely is a necessary condition for the public man." [Sidenote: The _Études historiques._] Lastly, the _Études historiques_[338] have just appeared; I will quote the Introduction, which is a real page of my Memoirs, and contains my history at the very moment at which I am writing: INTRODUCTION "Remember, so as not to lose sight of the pace of the world, that at that time[339]... there were citizens engaged, like myself, in ransacking the archives of the past amid the ruins of the present, in writing the annals of the old revolutions to the uproar of the new revolutions; they and I taking as our table, in the crumbling edifice, the stone that had fallen at our feet, while awaiting that which was to crush our heads" (_Études historiques_).