Book III

no longer any wit, Carnot was no longer honest, Soult had won no battles; it is true that Napoleon had no longer any genius. No one is ignorant of the fact that letters sent to an exile by post very rarely reached him, as the police made it their religious duty to intercept them. This is no new fact; Descartes complained of it in his exile. Now David, having, in a Belgian publication, shown some displeasure at not receiving letters which had been written to him, it struck the royalist journals as amusing; and they derided the prescribed man well on this occasion. What separated two men more than an abyss was to say, the regicides , or to say the voters ; to say the enemies , or to say the allies ; to say Napoleon , or to say Bonaparte . All sensible people were agreed that the era of revolution had been closed forever by King Louis XVIII , surnamed “The Immortal Author of the Charter.” On the platform of the Pont-Neuf, the word Redivivus was carved on the pedestal that awaited the statue of Henry IV . M. Piet, in the Rue Thérèse, No. 4, was making the rough draft of his privy assembly to consolidate the monarchy. The leaders of the Right said at grave conjunctures, “We must write to Bacot.” MM. Canuel, O’Mahoney, and De Chappedelaine were preparing the sketch, to some extent with Monsieur’s approval, of what was to become later on “The Conspiracy of the Bord de l’Eau”⁠—of the waterside. L’Épingle Noire was already plotting in his own quarter. Delaverderie was conferring with Trogoff. M. Decazes, who was liberal to a degree, reigned. Chateaubriand stood every morning at his window at No. 27 Rue Saint-Dominique, clad in footed trousers, and slippers, with a madras kerchief knotted over his gray hair, with his eyes fixed on a mirror, a complete set of dentist’s instruments spread out before him, cleaning his teeth, which were charming, while he dictated The Monarchy According to the Charter to M. Pilorge, his secretary. Criticism, assuming an authoritative tone, preferred Lafon to Talma. M. de Féletez signed himself A. ; M. Hoffmann signed himself Z. Charles Nodier wrote Thérèse Aubert . Divorce was abolished. Lyceums called themselves colleges. The collegians, decorated on the collar with a golden