If, confiding in titles derived from your own goodness, I venture to address directly to your Imperial Majesty the expressions of my gratitude for so distinguished an honor, I hope it will not be thought a presumptuous intrusion. I hope, too, that the willing homage I pay to the high and ruling virtues which distinguish your Imperial Majesty, and which form the felicity of so large a part of the world, will not be looked upon as the language of adulation to power and greatness. In my humble situation, I can behold majesty in its splendor without being dazzled, and I am capable of respecting it in its fall. It is, Madam, from my strong sense of what is due to dignity in undeserved misfortune, that I am led to felicitate your Imperial Majesty on the use you have lately made of your power. The princes and nobility of France, who from honor and duty, from blood and from principle, are attached to that unhappy crown, have experienced your favor and countenance; and there is no doubt that they will finally enjoy the full benefit of your protection. The generosity of your Imperial Majesty has induced you to take an interest in their cause; and your sagacity has made you perceive that in the case of the sovereign of France the cause of all sovereigns is tried,--that in the case of its church, the cause of all churches,--and that in the case of its nobility is tried the cause of all the respectable orders of all society, and even of society itself. Your Imperial Majesty has sent your minister to reside where the crown of France, in this disastrous eclipse of royalty, can alone truly and freely be represented, that is, in its royal blood,--where alone the nation can be represented, that is, in its natural and inherent dignity. A throne cannot be represented by a prison. The honor of a nation cannot be represented by an assembly which disgraces and degrades it: at Coblentz only the king and the nation of France are to be found. Your Imperial Majesty, who reigns and lives for glory, has nobly and wisely disdained to associate your crown with a faction which has for its object the subversion of all thrones. You have not recognized this universal public enemy as a part of the system of Europe. You have refused to sully the lustre of your empire by any communion with a body of fanatical usurpers and tyrants, drawn out of the dregs of society, and exalted to their evil eminence by the enormity of their crimes,--an assemblage of tyrants, wholly destitute of any distinguished qualification in a single person amongst them, that can command reverence from our reason, or seduce it from our prejudices. These enemies of sovereigns, if at all acknowledged, must be acknowledged on account of that enmity alone: they have nothing else to recommend them.