"Madame, without refusing Your Royal Highness the services which you have the right to command of me, I entreat you to allow the plan which I have formed of ending my days in retirement. My ideas cannot be acceptable to the persons who enjoy the confidence of the noble exiles of Holyrood: once misfortune were past, the natural antipathy to my principles and person would revive with prosperity. I have beheld the rejection of the plans which I had put forward for the greatness of my country, to give France frontiers within which she could exist safe from invasion, to remove from her the disgrace of the Treaties of Vienna and Paris. I have heard myself treated as a renegade, when I was defending religion; as a revolutionary, when I was striving to establish the throne on the basis of the public liberties. I should find the same obstacles increased by the hatred which the faithful of the Court, the town and the country would have conceived from the lesson inflicted upon them by my conduct on the day of trial. I have too little ambition, too great a longing for repose to make my attachment a burden to the Crown and to thrust upon it my importunate presence. I have done my duty without thinking for a moment that it gave me a right to the favour of an august Family: happy in being permitted to embrace its adversity, I see nothing higher than that honour; it will find no more zealous servant than myself; but it will find those who are younger and abler. I do not believe myself a necessary man, and I think that there are no necessary men left at this day: useless henceforth, I am going to retire into solitude to busy myself with the past. I hope, Madame, still to live long enough to add to the history of the Restoration the glorious page which your future destinies promise to France. "I am, Madame, "with the most profound respect, "Your Royal Highness' most humble and most "obedient servant, "CHATEAUBRIAND." The letter was obliged to await a safe messenger; time went on, and I added the following postscript to my dispatch: [Sidenote: The cholera.] "PARIS, 12 _April_, 1832. "MADAME, "All things grow old early in France; each day opens out new chances for politics and commences a series of events. We now have M. Périer's illness[375] and the plague sent by God. I have sent to M. the Prefect of the Seine the sum of 12,000 francs which the outlawed daughter of St. Louis and Henry IV. has destined for the relief of the unfortunate: a worthy use of her noble indigence! I shall strive, Madame, to be the faithful interpreter of your sentiments. I have never in my life received a mission with which I felt myself more honoured. "I am, with the most profound respect, etc."