OPINION OF BUSSY. 435 them to continue to serve France, no matter by whom chap. she was represented, induced them to remain at their posts. The answer of Bussy to this earnest exhorta- 1751. tion deserves to be recorded. "I reply," he wrote, under date August 23, " to the letter with which you favoured me on the 4th. Your departure for Europe is a thunderbolt which has confounded and alarmed me. You, who are leaving, exhort me to continue to serve the nation, and to support a work which is on the brink of destruction. Do you sincerely believe that I shall not be enveloped in the same disgrace as yourself? The blow is perhaps deferred, or suspended only to be struck with the greater force. But however that may be, I have ever considered it my duty to defer to your counsels, and to follow your reasoning. Under no circumstances shall I ever depart from that respectful and inviolable attachment, which has been till now my happiness and my glory, and which will always remain so. I await M. Gocleheu's replies to determine myself, although, like you, I am persuaded that I ought to await in India the replies of M. de Conflans. If, never- theless, in the post which I occupy I am not to be allowed liberty to act, if they shall endeavour to fetter me by the ideas of ignorant people and men without experience, my work will perish in my hands : and it will be concluded, either that I have destroyed it in pique, or that it was neither so splendid nor so well established as you and I have declared it to be. On the one side I declare that if the confidence with which you have honoured me is continued by M. Godeheu, I shall not refuse to devote myself to the service of the nation and the Company ; it is not that I expect that my services will be recognised or even acknowledged ; but I shall have, like yourself, the advantage of having served my country, without any emolument but the glory of having been useful to it, and the consolation of attributing its neglect and ingratitude only to the FJf 2
