i 3 4 RECOLLECTIONS OF FORTY YEARS. 



not plenty of all sorts have endeavoured to compromise 

 you in high places with reference to your alleged 

 political opinions. There has been a talk of intimacies, 

 relationships, and even affiliations.' 



" I confess that accusations of this kind do not 

 trouble me much, but, on the contrary, I am rather 

 pleased to find that those who have an interest in in- 

 juring one who has never done an injury to any man, 

 are obliged to have recourse to such weapons of the 

 imagination. For my official career for the last thirty- 

 four years, and my private life, of which an august 

 personage happens to know a good deal, put me be- 

 yond the reach of such wretched calumnies. 



"My whole life has been spent in the service of my 

 country, nor have I ever meddled in home politics. 

 I have never once set my foot, even out of curiosity, 

 in a public political meeting of any kind. During my 

 thirty years' consecutive employment abroad I was 

 only four times on leave in Paris, and I was not pre- 

 sent at the revolutions of 1830 or 1848. Put out of 

 active employment, upon my own demand, in 1849, 

 and receiving no pay or pension, I devoted myself 

 entirely to my family, and succeeded in making good 

 the inroads upon my small fortune caused by the 

 expenses of my latest missions abroad. 



" Sustaining in 1854 a very severe domestic afflic- 

 tion,* I set myself to work upon a project which theo- 

 retically had engaged my attention for many years. 



* Note of the Translator. M. de Lesseps is referring to the 

 death of his first wife. 



