"I was not received, on my last visit to London, in a garret in Holborn by one of my Emigrant cousins[496], but by the 'Heir of the Ages.' That heir took a pleasure in showing me hospitality in the places where I had so long awaited him. He hid himself behind me like the sun behind ruins. The torn screen that sheltered me seemed to me more magnificent than the wainscotings of Versailles. Henry was my last sick-nurse: those are the perquisites of misfortune. When the orphan entered, I tried to stand up; I had no other way of showing my gratitude. At my age, we have only the impotence of life left Henry has consecrated his wretchedness; stripped though he be, he is not without authority: every morning, I saw an Englishwoman pass before my window; she would stand still and burst into tears so soon as she saw the young Bourbon: what king on his throne would have had the power to make such tears as those flow! Those are the unknown subjects conferred by misfortune." The _Vie de Rancé_ appeared in the month of May 1844. Chateaubriand had dedicated his work to the memory of the Abbé Sequin, an old priest, his spiritual director, who had died the year before at the age of ninety-five: "I have written the story of the Abbé de Rancé in obedience to the orders of the director of my life." The work had only just appeared, when the Duc d'Angoulême died at Goritz, on the 3rd of June 1844. The author of the _Congrès de Vérone_, on this occasion, wrote the following letter, addressed to M. le Vicomte de Baulny: "MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE,