TO CHATEAUBRIAND FROM THE LOYAL MEN OF VILLENEUVE (LOT-ET-GARONNE) A town in the South sent me some very good wine to fill this cup, but I do not drink. Lastly, Legitimist France has taken as its motto the words, "Madame, your son is my King!" and several newspapers have adopted them as an epigraph; they have been engraved on necklaces and rings. I am the first to have uttered, in the face of the Usurpation, a truth which no one dared to speak, and, strange to say, I believe less in the return of Henry V. than the most contemptible _juste-milieu_ man or the most violent Republican. For the rest, I do not understand the word usurpation in the narrow sense given to it by the Royalist Party; there would be many things to say about this word, as about that of legitimacy: but there really is usurpation, and usurpation of the worst kind, in the guardian who plunders his ward and proscribes the orphan. All those grand phrases, that "the country had to be saved," are so many pretexts furnished to ambition by an immoral policy. Truly, ought we not to regard the meanness of your usurpation as an effort of virtue on your part? Are you Brutus[495], by chance, sacrificing his sons to the greatness of Rome? I have been able, in the course of my life, to compare literary renown and popularity. The former pleased me for a few hours, but that love of renown soon passed. As for popularity, it found me indifferent, because, in the Revolution, I have seen too much of men surrounded by those masses which, after raising them on the shield, flung them into the gutter. A democrat by nature, an aristocrat by habit, I would most gladly sacrifice my fortune and my life to the people, provided I need have little relation with the crowd. Anyhow, I was extremely sensible of the impulse of the young men of July who carried me in triumph to the Chamber of Peers, and this inasmuch as they did not carry me there to be their leader or because I thought as they did: they were only doing justice to an enemy; they recognised in me a man of honour and liberty: that generosity touched me. But this other popularity which I have lately acquired in my own party has caused me no emotion; there is an icy barrier between the Royalists and myself: we want the same King; with that exception, most of our wishes are opposed one to the other. [Footnote 407: This book was written in Paris, between the end of July and the 8th of August 1832; at Basle, Lucerne and Lugano, between August and October 1832; and again in Paris, between January and April 1833.--T.]