Say if that end would not have surpassed all that is most wonderful in that dynasty! Say if ever a magnificent enough temple could have been raised to its memory! Compare that end with that which the decrepit sons of Henry IV. would make, stubbornly pinning themselves to a throne swamped by democracy, trying to preserve their power with the aid of measures of police, measures of violence, methods of corruption, and dragging on for a few short moments a degraded existence! "Let them make my brother King," said the child Louis XIII., after the death of Henry IV., "I do not want to be King." Henry V. has no other brother than his people: let him make it King. To arrive at this resolution, chimerical though it may seem, one would have to feel the greatness of one's race, not because one was descended from an old stock, but because one was the heir of men through whom France became powerful, enlightened and civilized. Now, as I have just said, the way to be called upon to set to work on that plan would have been to wheedle the weaknesses of Prague, to raise magpies with the child of the throne like Luynes[51], to flatter Concini[52] like Richelieu. I had begun well at Carlsbad; a little note of submission and gossip would have forwarded my business. To bury myself alive in Prague was no easy matter, it is true; for not only should I have had to overcome the repugnance of the Royal Family, but the hatred of the foreigners as well. My ideas are odious to the Cabinets; they know that I detest the Treaties of Vienna, that I would make war at any price to give France the necessary frontiers and to restore the balance of power in Europe. However, by giving signs of repentance, by weeping, by expiating my sins of national honour, by beating my breast, by admiring for my penance the genius of the blockheads who govern the world, I might perhaps have been able to crawl into the Baron de Damas' place; then, suddenly standing erect, I should have flung away my crutches. [Sidenote: Wherein I fail.] But, alas, where is my ambition? Where is my faculty of dissimulation? Where is my art of enduring constraint and boredom? Where is my capacity for attaching importance to anything whatsoever? I took up my pen two or three times, I began to draft two or three letters in obedience to Madame la Dauphine, who had ordered me to write to her. Soon, revolting against myself, I wrote at one dash and after my own manner the letter which was to break my neck. I knew it quite well; I weighed the results quite well: it matters little. And to-day, now that the thing is done, I am delighted at having sent the whole business to the devil and flung my "governorship " out of so wide a window. I shall be told: "Could you not have expressed the same truths by stating them less crudely?" Yes, yes, by diluting, beating about the bush, employing honeyed words, bleating, quavering: Son œil tout pénitent ne pleure qu'eau béniste[53]. I cannot do that.