On alighting from my carriage and before going to bed, I wrote a letter to Madame la Duchesse de Berry to give her an account of my mission. My return had put the police into a flutter; the telegraph announced it to the Prefect of Bordeaux and the commandant of the fortress of Blaye: orders were given to redouble the measures of supervision; it appears even that Madame was put on board before the day fixed for her departure[46]. My letter missed Her Royal Highness by a few hours and was taken to her in Italy. If Madame had made no declaration; if even, after that declaration, she had denied the consequences of it; much more if, on arriving in Sicily, she had protested against the part which she had been compelled to play in order to escape from her gaolers, France and Europe would have believed her word, so greatly was Philip's Government under suspicion. All the Judases would have suffered punishment for the spectacle which they gave to the world in the smoking-room at Blaye. But Madame would not consent to retain a political character by denying her marriage; what one gains, by a lie, in reputation for cleverness one loses in consideration: any former sincerity which you may have professed hardly avails to defend you. When a man who enjoys public esteem demeans himself, he is no longer sheltered within his name, but behind his name. Madame, by her admission, escaped from the gloom of her prison: the female eagle, like the male eagle, has need of liberty and sunlight. M. le Duc de Blacas, in Prague, had announced to me the formation of a council of which I was to be the head, with M. the Chancellor[47] and M. le Marquis de Latour-Maubourg: I was going to become alone (still according to M. le Duc) the Council of Charles X., absent on some business. I was shown a plan: the machinery was very complicated; M. de Blacas' work retained a few arrangements made by the Duchesse de Berry, when she, on her side, had laid claim to organizing the State by coming madly, but bravely, to place herself at the head of her Kingdom _in partibus._ The ideas of that adventurous woman were not at all lacking in good sense: she had divided France into four great military governments, chosen the commanders, appointed the officers, embodied the soldiers and, without troubling whether all her people had joined the flag, she would herself have hastened to carry it; she did not doubt but that she would find in the fields St. Martin's[48] cope or the Oriflamme, Galaor[49] or Bayard. Blows of battle-axes and bullets from fire-locks, retreats into the forests, perils in the homes of a few faithful friends, caves, castles, cottages, escalades: all this suited and delighted Madame. There is something eccentric, original and captivating in her character that will make her live. The future will take her as it pleases, in spite of correct persons and sober-minded cowards. [Sidenote: My plans for Henry V.]