"Yesterday evening I had the honour to see M. le Vicomte de Chateaubriand, who received me with his customary kindness; nevertheless, I seem to have perceived that he no longer showed his usual geniality. Tell me, I beg of you, what can have caused me to lose his confidence, which I valued more highly than anything else. If he has been told 'stories' about me, I am not afraid to expose my conduct to the light of day, and I am prepared to reply to anything that he may have been told: he knows too well the spitefulness of intriguing people to condemn me unheard. There are timid persons too who make others so; but we must hope that the day will come when we shall see people who are really devoted. Well, he told me that it was of no use for me to meddle in his business; I am sorry for that, because I flatter myself that it would have been arranged according to his wishes. I have little doubt as to the person who has wrought this change in him; if I had been less discreet at the time, this person would not have been in a position to injure me with your excellent 'patron.' However, I am none the less devoted to him, as you may assure him once more with my respectful homage. I venture to hope that a day will come when he will be able to know me and to judge of me. "Pray accept, sir, etc." Hyacinthe answered this note with the following reply at my dictation: "My patron has nothing whatever in particular against the person who has written to me; but he wishes to live outside everything, and does not wish to accept any service." Shortly afterwards, the catastrophe came. [Sidenote: A Royalist conspiracy.] Do you know the Rue des Prouvaires[367], a narrow, dirty, populous street, near Saint-Eustache and the markets? It was there that the famous supper of the Third Restoration was held. The guests were armed with pistols, daggers and keys; after drinking, they were to make their way into the gallery of the Louvre and, passing at midnight through a double row of master-pieces, go to strike the usurping monster in the midst of a fête. The conception was a romantic one: the sixteenth century had returned; one might have believed one's self in the times of the Borgias, the Florentine Medicis and the Parisian Medicis: only the men were different.