His manuscript,çoisRené as I have just said, formed four volumes. This meant eighty thousand francs (twenty thousand francs per volume) which fell due to him, under the terms of his contract with the syndicate which possessed the right of publishing his future works. The four volumes were almost printed, when M. de Marcellus and M. de La Ferronnays, alarmed at seeing certain diplomatic documents brought to light which were destined, according to them, to remain secret, entreated Chateaubriand to sacrifice, here, there and everywhere, documents which, nevertheless, possessed the liveliest interest He consented to most of the curtailments asked for, and gave his friends such liberal measure that the original four volumes became reduced to two actual volumes.
"Well," said Chateaubriand to M. de Marcellus, when the sacrifice was consummated, "the two of you cost me forty thousand francs."
"Be it so," rejoined M. de Marcellus; "rather forty thousand francs than regrets when it is too late."
"The thing is done now; I have respected your scruples and La Ferronnays'; I have struck out a great deal to please you. But neither of you has placed himself sufficiently, in thought, outside his century and public affairs. To judge of an effect of tone, we should place ourselves at a distance. It is by saying all that one distinguishes one's self from the herd of buttoned-up and over-scrupulous statesmen. I have conceived diplomacy on a new plan; I speak out. You are wrong to dread my revelations; they could only do you credit. I tell you: you will do later, La Ferronnays or you, when you think the danger lessened, and for the same reasons, what you are preventing me from doing now. As far as I am concerned, I give you my authorization beforehand[494]."
Since Chateaubriand was induced to leave out of his Memoirs the Spanish War, which was "the great political event of his life," it is fitting that I should here remind the reader, if only in a few words, that this war was an act of high and great politics and not, as the enemies of the Restoration have repeated to satiety, an act of "servitude and subjection to the Northern Cabinets."
When M. de Montmorency, then Minister for Foreign Affairs, went to the Congress of Verona, he was the bearer of positive instructions containing these very words: