He declined
all offices and honors, considering his part as political songster at an
end. In 1833 he published a collection in which were remarked some songs
of a higher order, less partisan, and in which he foreshadowed a broader
and more peaceful democracy. After this he was silent, and as he was
continually visited and consulted, he resolved upon leaving Paris for
some years, in order to escape this annoyance. He went first to the
neighborhood of Tours, and then to Fontainebleau; but the free,
conversational life of Paris was too dear to him, and he returned to
live in seclusion, though always much visited by his troops of friends,
and much sought after. In leaving Paris during the first years of Louis
Philippe's reign, and _closing_, as he called it, _his consulting
office_, his chief aim was to escape the questions, solicitations, and
confidences of opposite parties, in all of which he continued to have
many friends who would gladly have brought him over to their way of
thinking. He did not wish to be any longer what he had been so
much,--a consulting politician; but he did not cease to be a practical
philosopher with a crowd of disciples, and a consulting democrat.
Chateaubriand, Lamennais, Lamartine,--the chiefs of parties at first
totally opposed to his own,--came to seek his friendship, and loved to
repose and refresh themselves in his conversation.
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