d'Hauterive,
and authorized him to allow me access to the collection of our treaties
and negotiations. M. d'Hauterive, who had grown old over despatches,
might be said to be the unalterable tradition and the living dogma of
our diplomacy. With his commanding figure, hollow voice, his thick and
powdered hair, his long, bushy eyebrows overshading a deep-set and dim
eye, he seemed a living, speaking century. He received me like a
father, and appeared happy to transmit to me the inheritance of all his
hoarded knowledge; he made me read, and take notes under his own eye,
and twice a week I used to study for a few hours under his direction. I
love the memory of his green old age, which so prodigally bestowed its
experience on a young man whose name he scarcely knew. M. d'Hauterive
died during the battle of July, 1830, amid the roar of the cannon which
annihilated the policy of the Bourbons and the treaties of 1815.
LXX.
Such were my studious and retired habits in my little room. I wished
for nothing more; my desire to enter on some career was in truth but my
mother's ambition for me, and the regret of expending the price of her
diamond, without some compensation in my bettered condition.
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