allow has professional
pursuits and associations to domineer over and repress the essential
elements of his heart and soul. Since then necessity has seized upon me
and constrained me to renounce what I considered the only happiness. It
is gone, it has forever vanished, that better time, adorned with study
and leisure, passed in a chosen circle, where I once received, from a
fair friend whose loss has been irreparable, this charming counsel
insinuated in the form of praise: 'If you think yourself dependent on
the approbation of certain people, believe me, that others are dependent
upon yours. And what better, sweeter bond can there be between persons
who esteem each other, than this mutual dependence on moral approbation,
balancing, so to speak, one's own sentiment of freedom. _To desire to
please and at the same time to remain free_,--this is the rule we ought
to follow.' I accepted the motto; I promised myself to be faithful to it
in all that I might write; my productions at that period will show
perhaps the degree in which I was influenced by it. But I perceive that
I have strayed from my text.

"I had forgotten to mention that, on the same day on which I wrote the
letter inserted first in the _Journal des Debats_, and afterwards in the
_Moniteur_, I forwarded to Messieurs Reynaud and Carnot the resignation
of my place at the Mazarine. I did not wish to expose myself to
interrogatories and explanations where I could be less sure of being
questioned in a friendly spirit and listened to with confidence. From
the moment of taking this step there was no longer much choice for me. I
had to live by my pen; and during the year 1848, literature in my
understanding of that term--and indeed literature of every kind--formed
one of those branches of industry, devoted to the production of
luxuries, which were struck with a sudden interdict, a temporary death.
I was asked in conversation if I knew any man of letters who would
accept a place in Belgium as professor of French literature. Learning
that the vacancy was at the University of Liege, I offered myself. I
went to Brussels to confer on the project with M. Charles Rogier,
Minister of the Interior, whom I had known a long time, and I accepted
with gratitude the propositions that were made to me.

"I left France in October, 1848. The press of Paris noticed my departure
only with raillery. When a man of letters has no party, no followers, at
his back, when he takes his way alone