I was moved at reading these documents. The daughter of so many kings, that woman fallen from so high a station, after closing her ear to my counsels had the noble courage to apply to me, to forgive me for foreseeing the failure of her enterprise: her confidence went to my heart and honoured me. Madame de Berry had judged me rightly; the very nature of that enterprise which made her lose all did not alienate me. To play for a throne, glory, the future and destiny is no vulgar thing: the world understands that a princess can be an heroic mother. But what must be consigned to execration, what is unexampled in history is the immodest torture inflicted on a weak woman, alone, cut off from assistance, overwhelmed by all the forces of a government conspiring against her, as though it were a question of conquering a formidable Power. Parents themselves abandoning their daughter to the laughter of the lackeys, holding her by her four limbs so that she may be delivered in public, calling the authorities from their comer, the gaolers, spies, passers-by, to see the child brought forth from their prisoner's womb, even as though they had called France to witness the birth of her King! And what prisoner? The grand-daughter of Henry IV.! And what mother? The mother of the orphan whose throne they were occupying! Do the hulks contain a family so low-born as to conceive the thought of branding one of its children with so great an ignominy? Would it not have been nobler to kill Madame la Duchesse de Berry rather than submit her to the most tyrannous humiliation? Whatever indulgence was shown in this business belongs to the century, whatever infamy to the Government Madame la Duchesse de Berry's letter and Note are remarkable in more than one place: the portion relating to the incorporation of Belgium and the marriage of Henry V. shows a head capable of serious things; the portion concerning the Family in Prague is touching. The Princess fears that she will be obliged to stop in Italy, "so as to recover a little and not to frighten her poor children too much by the change in her." What can be sadder and more sorrowful! She adds: "I ask you, O Monsieur de Chateaubriand, to convey to my dear children the expression of all my affection," etc. O Madame la Duchesse de Berry, what can I do for you, I a weak creature already half broken-down? But how to refuse anything to such words as these: "Shut up within the walls of Blaye, I find a comfort in having such an interpreter as Monsieur de Chateaubriand; he can reckon on my attachment for all time." Yes: I will set out on the last and greatest of my embassies; I shall go on the part of the prisoner of Blaye to find the prisoner of the Temple[514]; I shall negociate a new family compact, take the kisses of a captive mother to her exiled children and present letters in which courage and misfortune accredit me to innocence and virtue.