I find a fresh proof of this in the following passage, which he dictated to M. de Montholon at St. Helena (Memoires, tome iv. p 248).  “If,” said he, “the royal confidence had not been placed in men whose minds were unstrung by too important circumstances, or who, renegade to their country, saw no safety or glory for their master’s throne except under the yoke of the Holy Alliance; if the Duc de Richelieu, whose ambition was to deliver his country from the presence of foreign bayonets; if Chateaubriand, who had just rendered valuable services at Ghent; if they had had the direction of affairs, France would have emerged from these two great national crises powerful and redoubtable.  Chateaubriand had received from Nature the sacred fire-his works show it!  His style is not that of Racine but of a prophet.  Only he could have said with impunity in the chamber of peers, ’that the redingote and cocked hat of Napoleon, put on a stick on the coast of Brest, would make all Europe run to arms.’”

The immediate consequences of the Duc d’Enghien’s death were not confined to the general consternation which that unjustifiable stroke of state policy produced in the capital.  The news spread rapidly through the provinces and foreign countries, and was everywhere accompanied by astonishment and sorrow.  There is in the departments a separate class of society, possessing great influence, and constituted entirely of persons usually called the “Gentry of the Chateaux,” who may be said to form the provincial Faubourg St. Germain, and who were overwhelmed by the news.  The opinion of the Gentry of the Chateaux was not hitherto unfavourable to the First Consul, for the law of hostages which he repealed had been felt very severely by them.  With the exception of some families accustomed to consider themselves, in relation to the whole world, what they were only within the circle of a couple of leagues; that is to say, illustrious personages, all the inhabitants of the provinces, though they might retain some attachment to the ancient order of things, had viewed with satisfaction the substitution of the Consular for the Directorial government, and entertained no personal dislike to the First Consul.  Among the Chateaux, more than anywhere else, it had always been the custom to cherish Utopian ideas respecting the management of public affairs, and to criticise the acts of the Government.  It is well known that at this time there was not in all France a single old mansion surmounted by its two weathercocks which had not a systems of policy peculiar to itself, and in which the question whether the First Consul would play the part of Cromwell or Monk was not frequently canvassed.  In those innocent controversies the little news which the Paris papers were allowed to publish was freely discussed, and a confidential letter from Paris sometimes furnished food for the conversation of a whole week.