"That orphan has lately sent for me to London; I obeyed the close writ of misfortune. Henry has given me hospitality in a land that flies from under his feet. I have again seen that town which witnessed my fleeting greatness and my interminable wretchedness, those squares filled with fogs and silence, whence issued the phantoms of my youth. How long a time already has passed between the days when I dreamt of René at Kensington[491] and these last hours! The old exile found himself called upon to show to the orphan a town which my eyes can scarcely recognise. "A refugee in England for eight years; next, Ambassador to London and intimately acquainted with Lord Liverpool, Mr. Canning and Mr. Croker: what changes have I not seen in those spots, from George IV.[492], who honoured me with his intercourse to Charlotte[493], whom you will find in my Memoirs! What has become of my brothers in banishment? ...On that soil, where we were not noticed, we nevertheless had our merry-makings and, above all, our youth. Growing girls commencing life in adversity brought the weekly fruit of their toil, to revel in some dance or other of the country; attachments were formed; we prayed in chapels which I have just revisited and found unchanged. We wept aloud on the 21st of January, and were much moved by a funeral oration pronounced by the Emigrant curate of our village. We also strolled beside the Thames, to see vessels laden with the world's riches enter the port, to admire the country-houses at Richmond, we so poor, we who had lost the shelter of the paternal roof-tree! All those things constituted true happiness[494]. Will you ever return, O happiness of my misery? Ah, come back to life, companions of my exile, comrades of my bed of straw: behold me returned! Let us go once more into the little gardens of some despised tavern and drink a cup of bad tea while we talk of our country[495]: but I see no one; I have remained behind alone.... . . . . . . . . . . .