Pierre-Denis, Count of PEYRONNET (1778–1854), minister. Autograph letter, Ham, August 7, 1835, to François Roger of the Académie Française; 3 pages, small in-4, addressed. From his prison at Fort Ham, he reiterates his convictions: “Freedom is the best thing in the world; yet I place honor above it. One is a right, the other a duty. The difference is considerable.” He does not consider exile: “The bread of a foreign land is, moreover, too hard, and the soil of my homeland not light enough. Oh, the marvelous freedom that exile offers! Do you recall what I said about it in *Thoughts of a Prisoner*? My very witty friend, I stand by it.” He recalls what Napoleon wrote to the Prince Regent: “‘I come, like Themistocles, to take my seat at the British hearth’…This reference to Themistocles has always struck me as unfortunate. I, who have read Thucydides and know that the hero of Salamis was an accomplice of Pausanias […] I am not Themistocles; but I will not end up like him. I will not have the Persians’ gold, nor Magnesia, nor Lampsacus, nor Myonte; but I will not work to subjugate Greece to them”…