The Prince de Polignac dreaded my resignation. He felt that, if I retired, I should deprive him of Royalist votes in the Chambers and jeopardize his ministry. The idea was suggested to him of sending an express to me in the Pyrenees with orders from the King to go at once to Rome, to receive the King[158] and Queen of Naples[159], who were coming to marry their daughter[160] in Spain. I should have been greatly perplexed had I received that order. Perhaps I should have felt obliged to obey it, free to send in my resignation after fulfilling it. But, once in Rome, what might have happened? I should perhaps have been delayed; the fatal days[161] might have surprised me at the Capitol. Perhaps, also, the indecision in which I might have remained would have given M. de Polignac the parliamentary majority of which he was but a few votes short. Then the Address would not have been passed; the Ordinances resulting from that address would not have seemed necessary to their baleful authors: _Diis aliter visum._ [Sidenote: I resign my Embassy.] I found Madame de Chateaubriand quite resigned in Paris. Her head was turned at the idea of being Ambassadress in Rome, and assuredly many a woman's head would be turned for less; but, in great circumstances, my wife has never hesitated to approve of what she thought calculated to add consistency to my life and to enhance my name in the public esteem: in this she has more merit than most women. She loves display, titles and fortune; she detests poverty and a mean establishment; she despises those susceptibilities, those excesses of loyalty and self-sacrifice which she looks upon as thorough duperies for which nobody thanks you; she would never have cried, "Long live the King _quand même_;" but, where I am in question, everything changes: with a firm mind she accepts my disgraces, while cursing them. I had still to fast, to watch, to pray for the salvation of those who took good care not to don the hair-cloth with which they hastened to cover me. I was the sacred ass, the ass laden with the dry relics of liberty, relics which they adored with great devotion, provided they did not have the trouble of carrying them. The day after my return to Paris, I went to M. de Polignac. I had written him this letter on my arrival: "PARIS, 28 _August_ 1829. "PRINCE, "I have thought it more worthy of our old friendship, more becoming to the high mission with which I was honoured, and above all more respectful to the King to come myself to lay my resignation at his feet rather than send it hastily through the post. I ask a last service of you, to entreat His Majesty to consent to grant me an audience and hear the reasons that oblige me to give up the Roman Embassy. Believe me, prince, when I say that it costs me something, at the moment when you are coming into power, to abandon that diplomatic career which I had the happiness to open to you.