"Having the honour to be known personally to His Majesty the Emperor of Austria and to M. le Prince de Metternich, I thought that I could travel in the Austrian State with a passport which, being not yet one year old, was still legally valid and which had been endorsed by the Austrian Ambassador in Paris for Switzerland and Italy. As a matter of fact, monsieur le comte, I have travelled through Germany and my name has been sufficient to allow me to pass. Only this morning, the gentleman at the head of the Austrian custom-house at Haselbach did not think himself authorized to be equally accommodating and this for the reasons set forth in his _visa_ on my passport, enclosed, and on that of M. Pilorge, my secretary. He has compelled me, to my great regret, to retrace my steps to Waldmünchen, where I await your orders. I venture to hope, monsieur le comte, that you will be good enough to remove the little difficulty which stops me, by sending me, by the express which I have the honour of dispatching to you, the necessary permission to go to Prague and thence to Vienna. "I am, monsieur le gouverneur, with high regard, "Your most humble and most obedient servant, "CHATEAUBRIAND." "Pray pardon, monsieur le comte, the liberty which I am taking of enclosing an open note for M. le Duc de Blacas." Some little pride appears in this letter: I was hurt; I was as much humiliated as Cicero, when, on his return in triumph from his government of Asia, his friends asked him if he came from Baiæ or from his house at Tusculum. What! My name, which flew from pole to pole, had not reached the ears of a custom-house officer in the mountains at Haselbach! A thing which seems all the more cruel when one thinks of my successes at Basle. In Bavaria, I had been addressed as "My Lord" or "Your Excellency;" a Bavarian officer, at Waldmünchen, said aloud, in the inn, that my name required no _visa_ from an Austrian ambassador. Those were great consolations, I admit; but, after all, a sad truth remained: the world contained a man who had never heard speak of me. Who knows, however, if the Haselbach customs-officer did not know me a little! The police of all countries are so affectionately related! A politician who neither admires nor approves of the Treaties of Vienna, a Frenchman who loves the honour and liberty of France, who remains faithful to the fallen power, might well be on the index in Vienna. What a noble revenge to deal with M. de Chateaubriand as with one of those bagmen so suspicious to the spies! What a sweet satisfaction to treat as a vagabond whose papers are not in order an envoy charged to carry traitor-wise to a banished child the adieus of his captive mother!