Note 261 — BOOK XIV[162]
Alexander Teixeira de Mattos translation
It is right that I should set the Duc du Broglie's version against that of Chateaubriand:
"I really do not know," says the duke (Souvenirs, vol. III.), "if I spoke four words in a desultory conversation, in which we were animated by the same sentiments and preoccupied with the same object: but I am perfectly certain of this, that I never said that I had just been through Paris; that we were living on a volcano; that the employers were no longer able to restrain their workmen; that, if the King's name were thenceforth pronounced, they would cut the throat of whoever pronounced it; that we should all be massacred; that they would take the Luxembourg by assault as they had taken the Bastille in 1789. And as for the speech with which M. de Chateaubriand confounded that language, it is perhaps my fault, but I regret to say that I did not hear one word of it."—B.