I must ask pardon of my friends for the bitterness of some of my thoughts. I can laugh only with my lips; I have the spleen, a physical melancholy, a real complaint; whoever has read these Memoirs has seen what my lot has been. I was not a swimmer's stroke from my mother's breast before the torments had assailed me. I have wandered from ship-wreck to shipwreck; I feel a curse upon my life, a burden too heavy for that hut of reeds. Let not those whom I love, therefore, think themselves denied; let them excuse me, let them allow my fever to pass: between those attacks, my heart is wholly theirs. I had written thus much on these loose pages, flung pell-mell on my table and blown about by the wind that entered through my open windows, when they handed me the following letter and Note from Madame la Duchesse de Berry. Come, let us return once more to the second part of my double life, the practical part: "BLAYE CITADEL, 7 _May_ 1833. "I am painfully annoyed at the refusal of the Government to allow you to come to me, after the two requests which I have made. Of all the numberless vexations which I have had to undergo, this is certainly the most painful. I had so many things to tell you, so much advice to ask of you! Since I must relinquish the thought of seeing you, I will at least try, by the only means left to me, to send you the commission which I intended to give you and which you will accomplish: for I rely without reserve on your devotion to my son. I charge you therefore, monsieur, specially to go to Prague and tell my kinsfolk that, if I refused until the 22nd of February to declare my secret marriage, my design was the better to serve my son's cause and to prove that a mother, a Bourbon, was not afraid to endanger her life. I proposed to make my marriage known only when my son came of age; but the threats of the Government, the moral tortures, driven to the utmost degree, decided me to make my declaration. In the ignorance in which I am left as to the period at which my liberty will be restored to me, after so many frustrated hopes, the time has come to give to my family and to the whole of Europe an explanation which shall prevent injurious suppositions. I would have liked to be able to give it earlier; but absolute sequestration and unsurmountable difficulties in communicating with the outside have prevented me until now. You will tell my family that I was married in Italy to Count Hector Lucchesi-Palli, of the Princes of Campo-Franco.