Adieu; I am already many leagues nearer to you." [Sidenote: I return to France.] It gave me great pleasure to see my friends again[141]: I dreamt only of the happiness of taking them with me and ending my days in Rome. I wrote to make still more sure of the little Caffarelli Palace, which I contemplated hiring, on the Capitol and of the cell which I applied for at Sant' Onofrio. I bought English horses and sent them to the fields of Evander. I was already, in thought, taking leave of my country with a joy that deserved to be punished. When one has travelled in his youth and passed many years out of his country, one is accustomed to place one's death anywhere: when crossing the seas of Greece, it seemed to me that all those monuments which I perceived on the promontories were hostelries in which my bed was prepared. I went to pay my court to the King at Saint-Cloud: he asked me when I was returning to Rome. He was persuaded that I had a good heart and a bad head. The fact is that I was exactly the converse of what Charles X. thought me: I had a very cool and a very good head, and a heart which was but so-so towards seven-eighths of the human race. I found the King very ill-disposed towards his Ministry: he caused it to be attacked by certain royalist newspapers, or rather, when the editors of those publications went to ask him if he did not think them too hostile, he exclaimed: "No, no, go on." When M. de Martignac had made a speech: "Well," asked Charles X., "have you heard the Pasta[142]?" M. Hyde de Neuville's liberal opinions displeased him; he found more complaisance in M. Portalis, the Federate, who bore cupidity stamped on his face: it is to M. Portalis that France owes her misfortunes. When I saw him at Passy, I perceived what I had in part guessed: the Keeper of the Seals, while pretending to hold the Foreign Office ad interim, was dying to keep it, although, in any event, he had provided himself with the post of President of the Court of Appeal. The King, when the question arose of the appointment of a Foreign Secretary, had said: "I do not say that Chateaubriand shall not be my minister; but not for the present." The Prince de Laval had refused; M. de La Ferronnays was no longer able to apply himself to regular work. In the hope that, weary of resistance, the portfolio would remain in his hands, M. Portalis made no effort to persuade the King.