[Sidenote: Armand Carrel's funeral.] These words are remarkable in the mouth of a man fated to be killed in a duel. In 1800, when I returned to France, I did not know that a friend was being born to me on the shore where I was landing[319]. In 1836, I saw that friend lowered into the grave without those consolations of religion of which I brought back the memory to my country in the first year of the century. I followed the coffin from the residence of the deceased to the place of burial; I walked beside M. Carrel's father and gave my arm to M. Arago: M. Arago has measured the Heaven which I have sung. On reaching the gate of the little rural cemetery, the procession stopped; speeches were delivered. The absence of the cross informed me that the emblem of my affliction was to remain enclosed in the depths of my soul. Six years before, during the Days of July, passing in front of the colonnade of the Louvre, near an open grave, I met young men who carried me back to the Luxembourg, when I was going to make my protest in favour of a Royalty which they had just overthrown[320]; after six years, I was returning, on the anniversaries of the July festivals, to associate myself with the regrets of those young Republicans, even as they had associated themselves with my fidelity. How strange is destiny! Armand Carrel breathed his last in the house of an officer of the Royal Guard[321] who did not take the oath to Philip; I, a Royalist and a Christian, have had the honour of bearing a corner of the pall which covered noble ashes, but which will not hide them. Many kings, princes, ministers, men who thought themselves powerful, have gone off before me: I have not condescended to raise my hat to their coffin or devote a word to their memory. I have found more to study and depict in the intermediary ranks of society than in those which make men wear their livery; a gold-laced cloak is not worth the morsel of flannel which the bullet drove into Carrel's body. Carrel, who remembers you? The mediocrities and poltroons whom your death delivered from your superiority and their fears and I, who was not of your views. Who thinks of you? Who remembers you? I congratulate you on having, at one step, finished a journey whose prolonged passage becomes so disgusting and so lonely, on having brought the end of your march within the range of a pistol, a distance which to you appeared still too great and which you hastened to reduce to a sword's length. I envy those who have departed before me: like Cæsar's soldiers at Brundusium, from the top of the rocks on shore I cast my eyes upon the main sea and gaze towards Epirus to look if I can see the ships which have taken over the first legions come back to carry me across in my turn.