George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor
George Hillard, Ed.

[111] of an unaccountable regret, which Confalonieri received very politely, but declined, unless it were understood that the government had changed its opinion about his residence in France. He accepted, however, the permission to go to Belgium instead of England; and on the 29th of September set off to join his friends the Arconatis, at their castle of Gaesbeck, near Brussels.

Meantime the newspapers had got possession of the matter, and the government was attacked for its harshness. The Temps, the Ministerial paper, replied, and defended the king by three assertions: 1. That Confalonieri had come to Europe contrary to his promise given to Austria, that he would not return. 2. That the king in 1823, being then Duke of Orleans, had used his influence with Austria to have Confalonieri's sentence changed from death to imprisonment, and implied that it was partly at least through this influence that it had been so changed. 3. That the king had, two years since, again used his intervention with Austria and procured Confalonieri's full liberation, on condition that he should not be received in France. Confalonieri, feeling his honor attacked by this semi-official statement made with great formality, replied by a few decisive words in a note, to which he subscribed his name: 1. That, as to the promise to Austria, he never made any whatever; a fact well known, but since proved by the publication of the paper which contained what he did sign on his release from prison. 2. That, as to the two interferences spoken of and said to have been made by the Duke of Orleans and the King of the French, he had remained in complete ignorance of both of them up to the moment of the publication in the Temps. . . . . Everybody has known, since 1823, that the commutation of Confalonieri's punishment was procured, at the last possible moment, by the agony of his wife at the feet of the Empress; and that the Duke of Orleans, as the head of the liberal party then existing in France, would have injured instead of helped her cause, if he had been known or even suspected to favor it. . . . . The assertions, however, about the two interferences were made anew in the official paper after Confalonieri's note appeared; the matter seemed to grow more and more serious, and people began to wonder how it was to end. . . .

At last it came out. It was ascertained that the Austrian Charge d'affaires, Baron von Hugel,—Count d'appony, the Ambassador, being in Vienna,—as soon as he knew Confalonieri was here, went to Count Mole, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, and declared that Confalonieri had broken his word, that it was an outrage to Austria to permit him to be in France; and, in short, took up the matter so violently