"I have fulfilled all my engagements, monsieur: I returned at the sound of your voice; I have defended what I came to defend; I have undergone the cholera; I am returning to the mountain. Do not break your lyre, as you threaten to do; I owe to it one of my most glorious titles to the memory of mankind. Continue to make France smile and weep: for it so happens, by a secret known to you alone, that, in your popular songs, the words are gay and the music plaintive. "I recommend myself to your friendship and your muse. "CHATEAUBRIAND." I am to set out to-morrow. Madame de Chateaubriand will meet me at Lucerne. [Sidenote: I leave for Switzerland.] BASLE, 12 _August_ 1832. Many men die without losing sight of their steeple: I cannot meet with the steeple which is to see me die. In quest of a refuge in which to finish my Memoirs, I am taking the road anew, dragging at my heels an enormous luggage of papers, diplomatic correspondence, confidential notes, letters from ministers and kings; it is history riding pillion with romance. At Vesoul, I saw M. Augustin Thierry, living with his brother the prefect[434] When, formerly, in Paris, he sent me his _Histoire de la conquête des Normands_, I went to thank him. I found a young man in a room with half-closed shutters; he was almost blind; he tried to rise to receive me, but his legs no longer carried him and he fell into my arms. He blushed when I expressed to him my sincere admiration; it was then that he replied that his work was mine and that it was when reading the Battle of the Franks in the _Martyrs_ that he had conceived a new idea of writing history[435]. When I took leave of him, he then made an effort to follow me and dragged himself to the door, leaning against the wall: I went out quite affected by so much talent and so much misfortune. At Vesoul, after a long banishment, appeared Charles X.[436], now setting sail for the new exile which will be for him the last. I passed the frontier without accident with all my rubbish: let us see if, on the other side of the Alps, I may not enjoy the liberty of Switzerland and the sun of Italy, the needs of my opinions and my years. At the entrance to Basle, I met an old Swiss, a custom-house officer; he made me undergo "a liddle quarandine of a quarder of an hour;" my luggage was taken down into a cellar; they set in movement something or other which made the same sound as a stocking-frame; there rose a vinegary fume; and, thus purified from the contagion of France, I was released by my good Swiss. I have said, in the _Itinéraire_, speaking of the storks of Athens: "From the height of their nests, which revolutions cannot reach, they have seen the race of mortals change beneath them: while impious generations have risen on the tombs of the religious generations, the young stork has always nourished its old father."