"Come, George Dandin, pluck up courage; zounds, son-in-law, do us credit; off with your coat! Throw out of window two hundred thousand livres a year, a place to your liking, a high and magnificent place, the empire of the arts in Rome, the happiness of at last receiving the reward of your long and laborious struggle. Such is our good pleasure. At that price you will have our esteem. In the same way as we have stripped ourselves of our cloaks, leaving a good flannel waistcoat underneath, so you must throw off your velvet mantle, and remain naked. There is perfect equality, an exact level of altar and sacrifice." And, strange to relate, in this generous ardour to turn me out, the men who intimated their wishes to me were neither my real friends nor the joint sharers of my political opinions. I was to immolate myself forthwith to Liberalism, to the doctrine which had continually attacked me; I was to run the risk of shaking the Legitimist Throne in order to deserve the praises of a few poltroons of enemies, who had not the thorough courage to starve. I was to find myself swamped by a long embassy; the entertainments which I had given had ruined me; I had not paid the expenses of my first establishment. But what broke my heart was the loss of what I had promised myself in the way of happiness for the rest of my life. I have not to reproach myself with bestowing upon anybody those Catonian counsels which impoverish him who receives, not him who gives them, fully convinced as I am that those counsels are of no use to the man who does not feel them within himself. My resolve was fixed, as I have said, from the first; it cost me nothing to take, but it was painful to execute. When, at Lourdes, instead of turning south and rolling towards Italy, I took the road for Pau[157], my eyes filled with tears: I admit my weakness. What matter, if I none the less accepted and held the challenge fortune sent me? I did not return quickly, in order to let the days slip by. I slowly unwound the thread of that road which I had wound up with such alacrity, but a few weeks before.