1800-1814

[BOOK I][361]

My stay at Dieppe—Two phases of society—The position of my Memoirs—The year 1800—Aspect of France—I arrive in Paris—Changes in society—The year 1801—The Mercure—Atala—Madame de Beaumont and her circle—Summer at Savigny—The year 1802—Talma—The year 1803—The Génie du Christianisme—Failure prophesied—Cause of its final success—Defects in the work.

You know that I have often moved from spot to spot while writing these Memoirs; that I have often described those spots, spoken of the feelings with which they inspired me, and recalled my memories, thus mingling the history of my thoughts and of my wandering habitations with the history of my life.

You see where I am living now. Walking this morning on the cliffs behind Dieppe Castle, I saw the postern which communicates with the cliffs by means of a bridge thrown over a ditch: Madame de Longueville [362] escaped by that way from Queen Anne of Austria [363]; embarking secretly at the Havre, she landed at Rotterdam, and joined the Maréchal de Turenne [364] at Stenay. The great captain's laurels were no longer innocent, and the fair but caustic outlaw treated the culprit none too well.

Madame de Longueville, who had recovered from the Hôtel de Rambouillet, the Throne of Versailles, and the Municipality of Paris, became smitten with the author of the Maximes[365], and was as faithful to him as she was able. The latter lives less by his "thoughts" than by the friendship of Madame de La Fayette [366], Madame de Sévigné, the verses of La Fontaine, and the love of Madame de Longueville: see whither illustrious attachments lead.

The Princesse de Condé [367], when on the point of death, said to Madame de Brienne [368]:

"My dear friend, acquaint that poor wretch who is at Stenay of the state in which you see me, and let her learn how to die."

Fine words; but the Princess forgot that she herself had been loved by Henry IV., and that, when her husband carried her to Brussels, she had wanted to rejoin the Bearnese, "to escape at night by a window, and then to do thirty or forty leagues on horse-back;" she was at that time a "poor wretch" of seventeen.

Descending the cliff, I found myself on the high-road to Paris; it ascends swiftly on leaving Dieppe. On the right, on the rising slope of a bank, stands the wall of a cemetery; by the side of that wall was fixed the wheel of a rope-walk. Two rope-spinners, walking backwards in line, and swinging from leg to leg, were softly singing together. I listened: they had come to that couplet of the Vieux caporal, a fine poetic lie, which has brought us to our present state:

Qui là-bas sanglote et regarde?
Eh! c'est la veuve du tambour, etc [369].

Those men uttered the refrain:

Conscrits au pas; ne pleurez pas
. . . Marchez au pas, au pas [370],

in a voice so manly and so pathetic that the tears came to my eyes. Whilst themselves keeping step and twisting their hemp, they appeared to be spinning out the old corporal's dying moments: there was something, I cannot say what, in that glory peculiar to Béranger, thus lonesomely revealed by two sailors singing a soldier's death within view of the sea.

Dieppe.

The cliff reminded me of a monarchical greatness, the road of a plebeian celebrity: I compared in thought the men at the two extremities of society, and I asked myself to which of those eras I should have preferred to belong. When the present shall have disappeared like the past, which of those two renowns will the most attract the notice of posterity?

And yet, if facts were all, if, in history, the value of names did not counterbalance the value of events, what a difference between my time and the time which elapsed between the deaths of Henry IV. and Mazarin [371]! What are the troubles of 1648 compared to that Revolution which has devoured the old world, of which it, the Revolution, will die perhaps, leaving behind it neither an old nor a new state of society? Had not I to paint in my Memoirs pictures of incomparably higher importance than the scenes related by the Duc de La Rochefoucauld [372]? At Dieppe itself, what was the careless and voluptuous idol of seduced and rebellious Paris by the side of Madame la Duchesse de Berry [373]? The salvoes of artillery which announced to the sea the presence of the royal widow resound no longer [374]; the flattery of powder and smoke has left nothing upon the shore save the moaning of the waves.

The two daughters of Bourbon, Anne Geneviève and Marie Caroline, have departed; the two sailors singing the song of the plebeian poet will plunge into the abyss; Dieppe no longer contains myself: it was another "I," an "I" of my early days, now past, that formerly inhabited these regions, and that "I" has succumbed, for our days die before ourselves. Here you have seen me, a sub-lieutenant in the Navarre Regiment, drilling recruits on the pebbles; you have seen me here again, exiled under Bonaparte; you shall find me here again when the days of July surprise me in this place. Behold me here once more; I here resume my pen to continue my confessions.

In order that we may understand one another, it is well to cast a glance at the present state of my Memoirs.

What happens to every contractor working on a large scale has happened to me: I have, in the first place, built the outer wings of my edifice, and then, removing and restoring my scaffoldings in different positions, I have raised the stone and the mortar for the intermediate structures: it used to take several centuries to complete a Gothic cathedral. If Heaven grant me life, the work will be finished by stages of my various years; the architect, always the same, will have changed only in age. For the rest, it is a punishment to preserve one's intellectual being intact, imprisoned in a worn-out material covering. St Augustine, feeling that his clay was falling from him, said to God, "Be Thou a tabernacle unto my soul," and to men he said, "When you shall have known me in this book, pray for me."

Thirty-six years must be reckoned between the things which commence my Memoirs and those upon which I am now engaged. How shall I resume with any spirit the narration of a subject formerly replete for me with passion and fire, when it is no longer with living beings that I am about to converse, when it becomes a question of arousing lifeless effigies from the depths of Eternity, of descending into a funeral vault there to play at life? Am I not myself almost dead? Have my opinions not changed? Do I see objects from the same point of view? Have not the general and prodigious events which have accompanied or followed the personal events that so greatly perturbed me diminished their importance in the eyes of the world, as well as in my own eyes? Whosoever prolongs his career feels his hours grow cold; he no longer finds on the morrow the interest which he felt on the eve. When I seek in my thoughts, there are names and even persons that escape my memory, and yet they may have caused my heart to throb: vanity of man forgetting and forgotten! It is not enough to say to one's dreams, to love, "Revive!" for them to come to life again: the realm of shadows can be opened only with the golden bough, and it needs a young hand to pluck it.

Aucuns venants des Lares patries[375].

Aspect of France in 1800.

Imprisoned for eight years in Great Britain, I had seen only the English world, so different, especially at that time, from the European world. As the Dover packet approached Calais, in the spring of 1800, my gaze preceded me on shore. I was struck by the needy aspect of the country: scarce a few masts were to be seen in the harbour; inhabitants in carmagnole jackets and cotton caps came along the jetty to meet us: the conquerors of the Continent made themselves known to me by a clatter of wooden shoes. When we came alongside, the gendarmes and custom-house officers leapt on deck to inspect our luggage and our passports: in France a man is always suspected, and the first thing we perceive in our business, as well as in our amusements, is a cocked hat or a bayonet.

Mrs. Lindsay was waiting for us at the inn; the next day we set out with her for Paris: Madame d'Aguesseau, a young kinswoman of hers, and I. On the road one saw hardly any men; blackened and sun-burnt women, bare-footed, their heads bare or covered with a kerchief, were tilling the fields: one would have taken them for slaves. I ought rather to have been struck by the independence and virility of that land where the women wielded the mattock while the men wielded the musket. The villages looked as though a conflagration had passed over them; they were wretched and half demolished: mud or dust on every hand, dunghills and rubbish-heaps.

To the right and left of the road appeared overthrown country mansions; of their levelled thickets there remained only some squared trunks, upon which children played. One saw battered enclosure walls, deserted churches, from which the dead had been expelled, steeples without bells, cemeteries without crosses, headless saints that had been stoned in their niches. The walls were smeared with those Republican inscriptions that had already grown old: LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY, OR DEATH. Sometimes they had attempted to efface the word DEATH, but the red or black letters showed through the coating of lime. This nation, which seemed on the point of extinction, was commencing a new world, like those peoples which issued from the dusk of the savagery and destruction of the Middle Ages.

Approaching the capital, between Écouen and Paris, the elms had not been cut down; I was struck by those fine roadside avenues, unknown on English soil. France was as new to me, as in former days, the forests of America. Saint-Denis was laid bare, its windows were broken; the rain penetrated into its grass-grown naves, and there were no more tombs: I have since seen there the bones of Louis XVI., the Cossacks, the coffin of the Duc de Berry, and the catafalque of Louis XVIII.

Auguste de Lamoignon came to meet Mrs. Lindsay. His well-appointed carriage formed a contrast with the clumsy carts, the dirty, broken-down diligences, drawn by hacks harnessed with ropes, which I had met since leaving Calais. Mrs. Lindsay lived at the Ternes. I was put down on the Chemin de la Révolte, and made my way to my hostess' house across the fields. I stayed with her for four-and-twenty hours; I there met a great fat Monsieur Lasalle, whom she employed in arranging emigrant business. She sent to inform M. de Fontanes of my arrival; in eight-and-forty hours he came to fetch me in a little room which Mrs. Lindsay had hired for me at an inn almost at her door.

Paris once more.

It was a Sunday: we entered Paris on foot by the Barrière de l'Étoile at about three o'clock in the afternoon. We have no idea to-day of the impression which the excesses of the Revolution had made on men's minds in Europe, and chiefly among those absent from France during the Terror: I felt literally as though I were about to descend into Hell. I had, it is true, witnessed the beginnings of the Revolution; but the great crimes had then not yet been accomplished, and I had remained under the yoke of subsequent events as these had been related in the midst of the peaceful and orderly society of England.

Proceeding under my false name, and convinced that I was compromising my friend Fontanes, to my great astonishment, on entering the Champs-Élysées, I heard the sound of violins, horns, clarionets and drums. I saw public balls, at which men and women were dancing; farther on, the Tuileries Palace appeared to my eyes, against the background of its two great clumps of chestnut-trees. As for the Place Louis XV.[376], it was bare: it had the decay, the melancholy and deserted look of an old amphitheatre; one crossed it quickly; I was quite surprised to hear no moans; I was afraid of stepping in the blood of which not a trace remained; my eyes could not tear themselves from the place in the sky where the instrument of death had raised its head; I thought I saw my brother and my sister-in-law in their shirts, standing, bound, beside the blood-stained machine: it was there that the head of Louis XVI. had fallen. In spite of the gaiety in the streets the church-steeples were dumb; it seemed to me as though I had returned on the day of infinite sorrow, on Good Friday.

M. de Fontanes lived in the Rue Saint-Honoré, near Saint-Roch. He took me home with him, introduced me to his wife, and then took me to his friend, M. Joubert, where I found a temporary shelter: I was received like a traveller of whom one has heard speak.

The next day I went to the police, under the name of La Sagne, to lodge my foreign passport and to receive in exchange a permit to remain in Paris, which was renewed from month to month. In a few days I hired an entre-sol in the Rue de Lille, on the side of the Rue des Saints-Pères.

I had brought with me the Génie du Christianisme and the first sheets of the work, printed in London. I was directed to M. Migneret [377], a worthy man, who consented to recommence the interrupted printing, and to advance me something to live on. Not a soul knew of my Essai sur les révolutions, notwithstanding what M. Lemierre had written to me. I unearthed the old philosopher, Delisle de Sales, who had just published his Mémoire en faveur de Dieu, and went to call on Ginguené. He lodged in the Rue de Grenelle-Saint-Germain, near the Hôtel du Bon La Fontaine. His porter's box still bore this inscription:

"Here we honour each other with the title of citizen and say thee and thou. Shut the door behind thee, if you please."

I went up: M. Ginguené, who hardly recognised me, spoke to me from the height of the grandeur of all that he was and had been. I humbly retired, and did not endeavour to renew such disproportionate relations.

I continued at the bottom of my heart to cherish regretful memories of England; I had lived so long in that country that I had adopted its habits: I could not reconcile myself to the dirt of our houses, our staircases, our tables, to our uncleanliness, our noisiness, our familiarity, the indiscretion of our loquacity; I was English in manners, in taste, and to a certain degree in thought; for, if, as it is said, Lord Byron sometimes drew inspiration for his Childe-Harold from René it is also true to say that my eight years' residence in Great Britain, preceded by a journey in America, together with my long habit of talking, writing, and even thinking in English, had necessarily influenced the turn and expression of my ideas. But gradually I came to relish the good-fellowship for which we are distinguished, that charming, swift, easy commerce of thought, that utter absence of arrogance and prejudice, that heedlessness of fortune and names, that natural level of all ranks, that equality of mind which makes French society incomparable and redeems our faults: after a few months' residence among us, one feels that he can no longer live except in Paris.

I locked myself into my entre-sol and gave myself up entirely to work. In my intervals of rest, I went and reconnoitred in various directions. The Circus in the middle of the Palais-Royal had been filled up; Camille Desmoulins no longer held forth in the open air; one no longer saw bands of prostitutes going round, virginal attendants of the goddess Reason, and walking under the conduct of David, costumier and corybant. At the outlet of each alley, in the galleries, one met men crying sights: "galanty shows," "peep-shows," "physical cabinets," "strange animals;" in spite of all the heads that had been cut off, idlers still remained. From the cellars of the Palais-Marchand came bursts of music, accompanied by the double diapason of the big drums: it was perhaps there that dwelt the giants whom I sought, and whom immense events must necessarily have produced. I went down: an underground ball was jigging amidst seated spectators drinking beer. A little hunchback, perched on a table, played the violin and sang a hymn to Bonaparte, which ended with these lines:

Par ses vertus, par ses attraits.
Il méritait d'être leur père [378]!

He was given a sou after the ritornello. Such is the ground-work of the human society which bore Alexander and was then bearing Napoleon.

Changes in Paris.

I visited the places where I had taken the reveries of my early years. In my old-time convents, the club-men had been driven out after the monks. Wandering behind the Luxembourg, my footsteps led me to the Chartreuse: its demolition was being completed. The Place des Victoires and the Place Vendôme mourned the missing effigies of the Great King; the community-house of the Capuchins was sacked: the inner cloisters served as a retreat for Robertson's [379] dissolving views. At the Cordeliers, I inquired in vain for the Gothic nave where I had seen Marat and Danton in their prime. On the Quai des Théatins [380], the church of that Order [381] had been turned into a café and a rope-dancers' theatre. At the door was a coloured poster representing acrobats dancing on the tight-rope, with, in big letters, ADMISSION FREE. I elbowed my way among the crowd into that perfidious cave: I had no sooner taken my seat than waiters entered, napkin in hand, shouting like mad-men—

"Give your orders, gentlemen, give your orders!"

I did not wait to be told a second time, and I pitiably made my escape amid the jeering cries of the assembly, because I had no money wherewith to "give my orders."

The Revolution has become divided into three parts which have nothing in common between them: the Republic, the Empire, and the Restoration; those three different worlds, each as completely finished as the others, seem separated by centuries. Each of these three worlds has had its fixed principle: the principle of the Republic was equality, that of the Empire force, that of the Restoration liberty. The Republican era is the most original, and has made the deepest impression because it has been unique in history: never had there been seen, nor ever will be again, physical order produced by moral disorder, unity issuing from the government of the multitude, the scaffold substituted for the law and obeyed in the name of humanity.

In 1801, I assisted at the second social transformation. The jumble was a strange one: by an agreed travesty, a host of people became persons who they were not; each carried his assumed or borrowed name hung round his neck, as the Venetians at the carnival carry a little mask in their hand to show that they are masked. One was reputed an Italian or a Spaniard, another a Prussian or a Dutchman: I was a Swiss. The mother passed for her son's aunt, the father for his daughter's uncle; the owner of an estate was only its steward. This movement reminded me, in an opposite sense, of the movement of 1789, when the monks and religious issued from their cloisters and the old society was invaded by the new: the latter, after supplanting the former, was supplanted in its turn.

Nevertheless, the orderly world commenced to spring up again; people left the cafés and the streets to return to their houses; they gathered together the remains of their family; they readjusted their inheritance by collecting its remnants, as, after a battle, the troop is beaten and the losses counted. Such churches as remained whole were opened: I had the happiness to sound the trumpet at the gate of the Temple. One distinguished the old republican generations which were retiring, imperial generations which were coming to the front Generals of the Requisition [382], poor, rude of speech, stern of mien, who, from all their campaigns, had brought back nothing save wounds and ragged coats, passed officers glittering with the gold lace of the Consular Army. The returned Emigrant chatted quietly with the assassins of some of his kindred. The porters, all great partisans of the late M. de Robespierre, regretted the sights on the Place Louis XV., where they cut off the heads of "women who," my own concierge in the Rue de Lille told me, "had necks white as chicken's flesh."

The men of September, changing their names and their districts, sold baked potatoes at the street-corners; but they were often obliged to pack off, because the people, recognising them, upset their stalls and tried to kill them. The Revolutionaries who had waxed rich began to move into the great mansions of the Faubourg Saint-Germain that had been sold. On the road to become barons and counts, the Jacobins spoke only of the horrors of 1793, of the necessity for chastising the proletarians and putting down the excesses of the populace. Bonaparte, placing the Brutuses and Scævolas in his police, was preparing to bedizen them with ribands, to befoul them with titles, to force them to betray their opinions and dishonour their crimes. Amid all this, sprang up a vigorous generation sown in blood and growing up to shed none save that of the foreigner: from day to day, the metamorphosis was accomplished which turned Republicans into Imperialists and the tyranny of all into the despotism of one.

My letter to Madame de Staël.

While occupied in curtailing, expanding, altering the sheets of the Génie du Christianisme, I was driven by necessity to busy myself with other work. M. de Fontanes was then editing the Mercure de France: he suggested that I should write in that paper. These combats were not without a certain danger: the only way to touch politics was through literature, and half a word was enough for Bonaparte's police. A singular circumstance, which prevented me from sleeping, lengthened my hours and gave me more leisure. I had bought two turtle-doves; they cooed a great deal: I enclosed them in vain at night in my little travelling-trunk; they only cooed the more. In one of the moments of sleeplessness which they caused me, I bethought myself of writing for the Mercure a letter to Madame de Staël [383]. This freak caused me suddenly to emerge from the shade; a few pages in a newspaper did what my two thick volumes on the Revolution had been unable to do. My head showed a little above obscurity.

This first success seemed to foretell that which was to follow. I was engaged in correcting the proofs of Atala (an episode contained, as was René, in the Génie du Christianisme), when I perceived that some sheets were missing. I was seized with fright: I thought they had stolen my novel, assuredly a very ill-founded dread, for no one thought that I was worth robbing. Be this as it may, I determined to publish Atala separately, and I declared my resolution in a letter addressed to the Journal des Débats[384] and the Publiciste.

Before venturing to expose the work to the light of day, I showed it to M. de Fontanes: he had already read fragments of it in manuscript in London. When he came to Father Aubry's speech beside Atala's deathbed, he said brusquely, in a rough voice:

"That's not right; it's bad: write that over again!"

I went away disconsolate; I did not feel capable of doing better. I wanted to throw the whole thing into the fire; I spent from eight till eleven o'clock in the evening in my entresol, seated at my table, with my forehead resting on the back of my hands opened and spread out over my paper. I was angry with Fontanes; I was angry with myself; I did not even try to write, so great was my despair of self. Towards midnight, I heard the voice of my turtle-doves, softened by distance and rendered more plaintive by the prison in which I kept them confined: inspiration returned to me; I then and there wrote the speech of the missionary, without a single interlineation, without erasing a word, just as it remained and as it stands to-day. With a beating heart, I took it in the morning to Fontanes, who exclaimed:

"That's it, that's right! I told you you could do better!"

The noise which I have made in this world dates from the publication of Atala.[385] I ceased to live for myself and my public career commenced. After so many military successes, a literary success seemed a prodigy: people were hungering for it. The uncommon nature of the work added to the surprise of the crowd. Atala, falling into the midst of the literature of the Empire, of that classic school whose very sight, like that of a rejuvenated old woman, inspired boredom, was a sort of production of an unknown kind. People did not know whether to class it among the "monstrosities" or among the "beauties:" was it a Gorgon or a Venus? The assembled academicians discoursed learnedly upon its sex and its nature, in the same way as they made reports upon the Génie du Christianisme. The old century rejected, the new welcomed it.

I publish Atala.

Atala became so popular that, with the Brinvilliers [386] she went to swell Curtius' collection [387]. The wagoners' inns were decorated with red, green and blue prints representing Chactas, Father Aubry, and the daughter of Simaghan. My characters were displayed in wax, in wooden boxes, on the quays, as images of the Virgin and the saints are displayed at the fair. In a boulevard theatre, I saw my savage woman, in a headdress of cock's feathers, talking to a savage of her own kind of "the soul of solitude," in a way that brought the sweat to my brow with confusion. At the Variétés, they played a piece in which a little girl and a little boy, leaving their boarding-school, went off by track-boat to get married in a small town; as, on landing, they spoke with a wild look of nothing but crocodiles, storks and forests, their parents thought that they had gone mad. I was overwhelmed with parodies, caricatures and ridicule. The Abbé Morellet, in order to confound me, took his maid-servant on his knees and was unable to hold the young virgin's feet in his hands, as Chactas held Atala's feet during the storm: if the Chactas of the Rue d'Anjou had had his portrait painted in this attitude, I would have forgiven him his criticism.

All this bustle served to increase the fuss attendant upon my appearance. I became the fashion. My head was turned: I was unaccustomed to the delights of self-love and became intoxicated with it I loved fame like a woman, like a first love. And yet, coward that I was, my affright equalled my passion: I was a conscript and stood the fire badly. My natural timidity, the doubts I have always had of my talent, made me humble in the midst of my triumphs. I shrank from my splendour; I wandered in lonely places, trying to extinguish the halo with which my head was crowned. In the evenings, with my hat thrust down over my eyes, lest the great man should be recognised, I went to a public smoking-room to read my praises in secret, in some small, unknown paper. Alone with my renown, I prolonged my walks as far as the steam-pump at Chaillot [388], on the same road where I had suffered so much on going to Court: I was no more at my ease with my new honours. When my superiority dined for thirty sous in the Latin Quarter it swallowed its food the wrong way, troubled as it was by the staring of which it thought itself the object. I watched myself, I said to myself:

"And yet it is you, extraordinary being, eating like any one else!"

In the Champs-Élysées was a café which I liked because of some nightingales which hung in a cage inside the coffee-room; Madame Rousseau, who kept the place, knew me by sight, without knowing who I was. At ten o'clock in the evening, they used to bring me a cup of coffee, and I looked for Atala in the Petites-Affiches, to the sound of the voices of my half-dozen Philomelas. Alas! I soon saw poor Madame Rousseau die; our society of the nightingales and of the fair Indian who sang, "Sweet habit of loving, so needful to life!" lasted but a moment.

If success had no power to prolong in me this stupid infatuation of vanity, or to pervert my reason, it was attended with dangers of another kind: those dangers increased on the appearance of the Génie du Christianisme and on my resignation after the death of the Duc d'Enghien. Then came thronging around me, together with the young women who cry over novels, the crowd of Christian women, and those other noble enthusiasts whose breast beats high at the sight of an honourable action. The young girls of thirteen or fourteen were the most dangerous; for, knowing neither what they want nor what they want with you, they enticingly mingle your image with a multitude of fables, ribbons and flowers. Jean Jacques Rousseau speaks of the declarations which he received on the publication of the Nouvelle Héloïse[389] and of the conquests which were offered him: I do not know if empires would have been thus yielded to me, but I do know that I was buried beneath a heap of scented notes; if those notes were not, to-day, notes from so many grand-mothers, I should be puzzled how to relate, with becoming modesty, how they fought for a line in my hand, how they picked up an envelope addressed by me, and how, blushing and with lowered head, they hid it beneath a flowing veil of long tresses. If I have not been spoilt, it must be because my nature is good.

And become the fashion.

Whether from genuine politeness or inquisitive weakness, I sometimes went so far as to think myself obliged to call and thank the unknown ladies who signed the flattery they addressed to me with their names. One day, I found a bewitching creature under her mother's wing, on a fourth floor, where I have never set foot since. A fair Pole received me in silk-hung rooms; half-odalisk, half-Valkyrie, she looked like a snowdrop with its white flowers, or like one of those graceful heather-blooms which replace the other daughters of Flora when the season of the latter has not yet come or has passed: that female chorus, varied in age and beauty, was the realisation of my former sylph. The two-fold effect upon my vanity and my feelings was so much the more to be dreaded inasmuch as, until then, excepting one serious attachment, I had been neither sought out nor distinguished by the crowd. At the same time I am bound to say that, even though it were easy for me to take advantage of a passing illusion, my sincerity revolted against the idea of a voluptuousness that would have come to me by the chaste paths of religion: to be loved through the Génie du Christianisme, loved for the Extrème Onction, loved for the Fête des Morts! I could never have been so shameful a Tartuffe.

I knew a Provençal physician, Dr. Vigaroux [390]; he had arrived at an age when every pleasure means the loss of a day, and he said "that he had no regret for the time thus lost; without troubling himself whether he gave the happiness which he received, he went towards the death of which he hoped to make his last delight." Nevertheless, I was a witness of his poor tears when he breathed his last; he could not hide his affliction from me; it was too late: his white hairs were not long enough to conceal and wipe away his tears. The only one to be really unhappy on leaving the earth is the unbeliever: for the man without faith, existence is terrible in this, that it carries a sense of annihilation; if one had not been born, he would not experience the horror of ceasing to be: the life of the atheist is a frightful lightning-flash, which serves but to reveal an abyss.

O great and merciful God, Thou hast not cast us upon earth for unworthy troubles and a miserable happiness! Our inevitable disenchantment admonishes us that our destinies are more sublime. Whatever may have been our errors, if we have preserved a serious spirit and thought of Thee in the midst of our weaknesses, we shall, whenever Thy goodness sets us free, be carried to that region where attachments endure for ever!

It was not long before I received the punishment of my literary vanity, the most detestable of all, if not the most foolish: I had thought that I should be able to relish in petto the satisfaction of being a sublime genius, not by wearing, as they do to-day, a beard and an eccentric coat, but by remaining dressed like decent people, distinguished only by superiority. Useless hope! My pride was to be chastened; the correction was administered by the political persons whom I was obliged to know: celebrity is a benefice with the cure of souls.

M. de Fontanes was acquainted with Madame Bacciochi [391]; he introduced me to Bonaparte's sister, and soon after to the First Consul's brother Lucien [392]. The latter had a country-place near Senlis le Plessis, where I was coerced to go and dine; the château had once belonged to the Cardinal de Bernis [393]. Lucien had in his garden the tomb of his first wife [394], a lady half German and half Spanish, and the memory of the poet-cardinal. The nutrient nymph of a stream dug with the spade was a mule which drew water from a well: that was the commencement of all the rivers which Bonaparte was to cause to flow in his Empire. Efforts were being made to have my name struck off the lists; I was already called, and called myself aloud, Chateaubriand, forgetting that I ought to call myself Lassagne. Emigrants came to see me: among others, Messrs, de Bonald [395] and de Chênedollé [396]. Christian de Lamoignon, my companion in exile in London, took me to Madame Récamier: the curtain fell suddenly between her and me.

The Comtesse de Beaumont.

The person who filled the largest place in my existence, on my return from the Emigration, was Madame la Comtesse de Beaumont [397]. She lived during a part of the year at the Château de Passy, near Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, which M. Joubert inhabited during the summer. Madame de Beaumont returned to Paris, and expressed a wish to meet me.

So that my life might be one long chain of regrets, Providence willed it that the first person who received me kindly at the outset of my public career should also be the first to disappear. Madame de Beaumont opens the funeral procession of those women who have passed away before me. My most distant memories rest upon ashes, and they have continued to fall from grave to grave: like the Indian pundit, I recite the prayers for the dead until the flowers of my chaplet are faded.

Madame de Beaumont was the daughter of Armand Marc de Saint-Hérem, Comte de Montmorin, French Ambassador in Madrid, commandant in Brittany, member of the Assembly of Notables in 1787, and Foreign Minister under Louis XVI., by whom he was much liked: he perished on the scaffold, where he was followed by a portion of his family [398].

Madame de Beaumont was ill rather than well-favoured, and very like her portrait by Madame Lebrun [399]. Her face was thin and pale; her eyes were almond-shaped and would have perhaps been too brilliant, if an extraordinary suavity of expression had not half extinguished her glances and caused them to shine languidly, as a ray of light becomes mellowed by passing through crystal water. Her character had a sort of rigidity and impatience, which arose from the strength of her feelings and from the inward suffering which she experienced. Endowed with loftiness of soul and great courage, she was born for the world, from which her spirit had withdrawn through choice and unhappiness; but when a friendly voice evoked that secluded intelligence, it came and spoke to you in words from Heaven. Madame de Beaumont's extreme weakness made her slow of expression, and this slowness was touching. I knew this afflicted woman only at the moment of her flight; she was already stricken with death, and I devoted myself to her sufferings. I had taken a lodging in the Rue Saint-Honoré, at the Hôtel d'Étampes, near the Rue Neuve-du-Luxembourg. In this latter street, Madame de Beaumont occupied an apartment looking out upon the gardens of the Ministry of Justice. I called to see her every evening, with her friends and mine, M. Joubert, M. de Fontanes, M. de Bonald, M. Molé [400], M. Pasquier [401], M. de Chênedollé, men who have filled a place in literature and public life.

Joseph Joubert.

Full of oddities and eccentricities, M. Joubert will be an eternal loss to those who knew him. He had an extraordinary grip upon one's mind and heart; and, when once he had seized hold of you, his image was there, like a fixed thought, like an obsession that refused to be driven away. He made great pretensions to calmness, and no one was so easily perturbed as he: he watched himself in order to stop those emotions of the mind, which he thought injurious to his health, and constantly his friends came and disturbed the precautions which he had taken to keep well, for he could not prevent himself from being affected by their sadness or joy: he was an egoist who troubled himself only about others. In order to recover his strength, he often thought himself obliged to close his eyes and refrain from speaking for hours at a time. Heaven knows what noise and movement passed inwardly within him during this repose and silence which he laid upon himself. M. Joubert at every moment changed his diet and regimen, living one day on milk, another on minced meat, causing himself to be jolted at full speed over the roughest roads, or drawn at a snail's pace along the smoothest alleys. When he read, he tore out of his books the leaves which displeased him, thus forming a library for his own use, composed of scooped-out works, contained in bindings too large for them.

A profound metaphysician, his philosophy, thanks to an elaboration peculiar to himself, became painting or poetry; a Plato with the heart of a La Fontaine, he had formed an idea of perfection which prevented him from finishing anything. In manuscripts found after his death, he said:

"I am like an ‚Æolian harp, which gives forth a few beautiful sounds and plays no tune."

Madame Victorine de Chastenay [402] maintained that "he had the appearance of a soul which had met with a body by accident, and put up with it as best it could:" a definition both charming and true.

We laughed at the enemies of M. de Fontanes, who tried to pass him off for a deep and dissembling politician: he was simply an irascible poet, frank to the pitch of anger, with a mind hedged in by contrariety, and as little able to conceal its opinion as to accept that of others. The literary principles of his friend Joubert were not his: the latter found some good everywhere and in every writer; Fontanes, on the contrary, held such and such a doctrine in abhorrence, and could not hear the names mentioned of certain authors. He was the sworn enemy of the principles of modern composition: to place before the reader's eyes material action, the crime at work or the gibbet with its rope, seemed to him so many enormities; he maintained that objects should never be seen except amid poetic surroundings, as though under a crystal globe. Sorrow spending itself mechanically through the eyes seemed to him a sensation fit only for the Cirque or the Grève; he understood the tragic sentiment only as ennobled by admiration and changed, through the medium of art, into "a charming pity." I quoted the Greek vases to him: in the arabesques of those vases one sees Hector's body drawn behind the car of Achilles, while a little figure, flying in the air, represents the shade of Patrocles, consoled by the vengeance of the son of Thetis.

"Well, Joubert," cried Fontanes, "what do you say to that metamorphosis of the muse? How those Greeks respected the soul!"

Joubert thought himself attacked, and placed Fontanes in contradiction with himself by reproaching him with his indulgence for me.

These discussions, highly comical as they often were, never came to an end: one evening, at half-past eleven, when I lived on the Place Louis XV., in the attic floor of Madame de Coislin's house, Fontanes climbed up my eighty-four stairs again to come furiously, with many raps of his cane, to finish an argument which he had left interrupted: it concerned Picard [403], whom at that moment he placed far above Molière; he would have taken good care not to have written a single word of what he said: Fontanes talking and Fontanes pen in hand were two different men.

It was M. de Fontanes, I like to repeat, who encouraged my first attempts: it was he who announced the publication of the Génie du Christianisme; it was his muse which, full of astonished devotion, directed mine in the new paths along which it had precipitated itself: he taught me to conceal the deformity of objects by the manner of throwing light upon them; to put classic language into the mouths of my romantic characters as far as in me lay.

In former days there were men who were guardians of taste, like the dragons who watched over the golden apples in the garden of the Hesperides; they did not allow youth to enter until it was able to touch the fruit without spoiling it.

And other literary friends.

My friend's writings take you by a happy road: the mind experiences a sense of well-being, and finds itself in an harmonious situation where everything charms and nothing wounds. M. de Fontanes incessantly revised his productions; none was more convinced than that master of the old days of the excellence of the maxim, "Hasten slowly." What, then, would he say to-day when, both morally and physically, we exert ourselves to do away with distances, and when we think we can never go fast enough. M. de Fontanes preferred to travel at the will of a delicious measure. You have read what I said of him when I found him in London; the regrets which I expressed then I must repeat now: life obliges us ever to weep in anticipation or in remembrance.

M. de Bonald had a shrewd intelligence; his ingenuity was mistaken for genius; he had dreamt out his political metaphysics with the Army of Condé, in the Black Forest, in the same way as those Jena and Göttingen professors who have since marched at the head of their pupils and let themselves be killed for the liberty of Germany. An innovator, although he had been a musketeer under Louis XVI., he looked upon the ancients as children in politics and literature; and he maintained, while he was the first to employ the fatuousness of the language now in use, that the Grand-master of the University was "not yet sufficiently advanced to understand that."

Chênedollé, with knowledge and talent, not native but acquired, was so sad that he nicknamed himself the "Crow [404]:" he went freebooting in my works. We had made a compact: I yielded him my skies, my mists, my clouds; but it was arranged that he should leave me my zephyrs, my waves, and my forests.

I am now speaking only of my literary friends; as to my political friends, I do not know whether I shall tell you about them: principles and speeches have sunk abysses between us!

Madame Hocquart [405] and Madame de Vintimille [406] came to the meetings in the Rue Neuve-du-Luxembourg. Madame de Vintimille, one of the women of olden time, of whom few remain, went into the world and brought us news of what was going on: I asked her if people were "still building cities." The descriptions of little scandals upon which she entered with a poignant but inoffensive raillery made us the more heartily appreciate our own security. Madame de Vintimille had been sung, together with her sister, by M. de La Harpe. Her language was guarded, her character restrained, her wit acquired; she had lived with Mesdames de Chevreuse [407], de Longueville, de La Vallière, de Maintenon [408], with Madame Geoffrin [409] and Madame du Defiant [410]. She blended well with a company whose charm depended upon the variety of its wits and the combination of their different values. Madame Hocquart had been fondly loved by Madame de Beaumont's brother [411], who had occupied himself with the lady of his thoughts to the very scaffold, as Aubiac had gone to the gallows kissing a sleeve of soft blue velvet which remained to him from the favours of Margaret of Valois [412].

Who are no more.

Never again will there assemble under the same roof so many distinguished persons belonging to different ranks and of different destinies, able to talk of the commonest as of the loftiest things: a simplicity of speech which came not from poverty but from choice. It is perhaps the last company in which the French genius of olden time has appeared. Among the new French will not be found that urbanity which is the fruit of education, and which was transformed by long usage into aptness of character. What has become of that company? Make plans, bring friends together: you but prepare for yourself an eternal mourning! Madame de Beaumont is no more, Joubert is no more, Chênedollé is no more, Madame de Vintimille is no more. I used to visit M. Joubert at Villeneuve during the vintage; I walked with him on the Yonne Hills; he picked mushrooms in the copses, and I yellow saffron in the fields. We talked of everything, and particularly of our friend Madame de Beaumont, for ever absent; we recalled the memory of our former hopes. At night we returned to Villeneuve, a town surrounded by broken-down walls, of the time of Philip Augustus [413], and by half-razed towers, from above which rose the smoke from the vintagers' hearths. Joubert showed me, in the distance from the hill, a sandy path among the woods which he used to take when going to see his neighbour, who hid herself at the Château de Passy during the Terror.

I have passed four or five times through the Senonais since the death of my dear host. I saw the hills from the high-road: Joubert walked there no longer; I recognised the trees, the fields, the vines, the little heaps of stones on which we used to rest ourselves. Driving through Villeneuve, I have cast a glance on the deserted street and the closed house of my friend. The last time when that happened, I was going on an embassy to Rome: ah, if he had been at home, I would have taken him with me to Madame de Beaumont's grave! It has pleased God to open a celestial Rome to M. Joubert, even better suited to his soul, which abandoned Platonism for Christianity. I shall not meet him again here below:

"I shall go to him rather: but he shall not return to me [414]."

The success of Atala having decided me to start afresh on the Génie du Christianisme, of which two volumes were already in print, Madame de Beaumont offered to give me a room in the country, in a house which she had hired at Savigny [415]. I spent six months with her in this retreat, with M. Joubert and our other friends.

The house stood at the entrance to the village, on the Paris side, near an old high-road known in that part as the Chemin de Henri IV.: it leant against a vine-clad slope, and faced Savigny Park, ending in a wooded screen, and crossed by the little River Orge. On the left, the plain of Viry spread out as far as the springs of Juvisy. In every direction, in this part of the country, lie valleys, where we used to go in the evenings in search of new walks.

In the morning, we breakfasted together; after breakfast, I withdrew to my work; Madame de Beaumont had the goodness to copy out the quotations which I marked for her. This noble woman offered me a shelter when I had none: without the peace which she gave me, I should perhaps never have finished a work which I had been unable to complete during my misfortunes.

I shall evermore remember certain evenings passed in this refuge of friendship: on returning from walking we gathered near a fresh-water basin, which stood in the middle of a grass-plot in the kitchen-garden. Madame Joubert, Madame de Beaumont and I sat down on a bench; Madame Joubert's son rolled on the grass at our feet; that child has already disappeared. M. Joubert walked alone on a gravel path; two watch-dogs and a cat played around us, while pigeons cooed on the edge of the roof. What happiness for a man newly landed from exile, after spending eight years in profound abandonment, excepting a few days quickly lapsed! It was generally on these evenings that my friends made me talk of my travels: I have never described the desert of the New World so well as at that time. At night, when the windows of our rustic drawing-room were opened, Madame de Beaumont noted different constellations, telling me that I should remember one day that she had taught me to know them: since I have lost her, I have several times, not far from her grave in Rome, in the midst of the Campagna, looked in the firmament for the stars whose names she told me: I have seen them shining above the Sabine Hills; the protracted rays of those stars shot down and struck the surface of the Tiber. The spot where I saw them over the woods of Savigny, the spots where I have seen them since, the fitfulness of my destinies, that sign which a woman had left for me in the sky to remind me of her: all this broke my heart. By what miracle does man consent to do what he does upon earth, he who is doomed to die?

One day, in our retreat, we saw a man enter stealthily by one window and go out by another: it was M. de Laborie [416]; he was escaping from Bonaparte's claws. Shortly after appeared one of those souls in pain which are of a different species from other souls and which, on their passage, mingle their unknown misfortune with the vulgar sufferings of mankind: it was Lucile, my sister.

I meet my sisters.

After my arrival in France, I had written to my family to inform them of my return. Madame la Comtesse de Marigny, my eldest sister, was the first to come to me, went to the wrong street, and met five Messieurs Lassagne, of whom the last climbed up through a cobbler's trap-door to answer to his name. Madame de Chateaubriand came in her turn: she was charming, and full of the qualities calculated to give me the happiness which I found with her after we came together again. Madame la Comtess de Caud, Lucile, came next. M. Joubert and Madame de Beaumont became smitten with a passionate fondness and a tender pity for her. Then commenced between them a correspondence which ended only with the death of the two women who had bent over towards one another like two flowers of the same species on the point of fading away. Madame Lucile having stopped at Versailles on the 30th of September 1802, I received this note from her:

"I write to beg you to thank Madame de Beaumont on my behalf for the invitation she has sent me to go to Savigny. I hope to have that pleasure in about a fortnight, unless there be any objection on Madame de Beaumont's side."

Madame de Caud came to Savigny as she had promised.

I have told you how, in my youth, my sister, a canoness of the Chapter of the Argentière, and destined for that of Remiremont, cherished an attachment for M. de Malfilâtre, a counsellor to the Parliament of Brittany, which, remaining locked within her breast, had increased her natural melancholy. During the Revolution she married M. le Comte de Caud, and lost him after fifteen months of marriage. The death of Madame la Comtesse de Farcy, a sister whom she fondly loved, added to Madame de Caud's sadness. She next attached herself to Madame de Chateaubriand, my wife, and gained an empire over the latter which became painful, for Lucile was violent, masterful, unreasonable, and Madame de Chateaubriand, subject to her caprices, hid from her in order to render her the services which a richer shows to a susceptible and less happy friend.

Lucile's genius and character had almost reached the pitch of madness of Jean Jacques Rousseau; she thought herself exposed to secret enemies: she gave Madame de Beaumont, M. Joubert, myself, false addresses at which to write to her; she examined the seals, seeking to discover whether they had not been broken; she wandered from one home to the other, unable to remain either with my sisters or my wife; she had taken an antipathy to them, and Madame de Chateaubriand, after showing her a devotion surpassing all that one could imagine, had ended by breaking down under the burden of so cruel an affection.

Another fatality had struck Lucile: M. de Chênedollé, then living near Vire, had gone to see her at Fougères; soon there was talk of a marriage, which fell through. Everything failed my sister at once, and, thrown back upon herself, she no longer had the strength to bear up. This plaintive spectre rested for a moment on a stone, in the smiling solitude of Savigny: there were so many hearts there which would have joyfully received her! They would so gladly have restored her to a sweet reality of existence! But Lucile's heart could beat only in an atmosphere made expressly for her and never breathed by others. She swiftly devoured the days of the world apart in which Heaven had placed her. Why had God created a being only to suffer? What mysterious relation can there be between a long-suffering nature and an eternal principle?

My sister had not changed in any way; she had only taken the fixed expression of her ills: her head had sunk a little, like a head on which the hours had weighed heavily. She reminded me of my parents: those first family memories, evoked from the grave, surrounded me like wraiths which had gathered round at night to warm themselves at the dying flame of a funeral pile. As I watched her, I seemed to see in Lucile my whole childhood, looking out at me from behind her somewhat wild eyes.

The vision of pain faded away: that woman, borne down by life, seemed to have come to fetch the other dejected woman whom she was to take with her.

Talma.

The summer passed: according to custom, I promised myself to begin it again next year; but the hand of the clock does not return to the hour which we would wish to call back. During the winter, in Paris, I made some new acquaintances. M. Jullien, a rich man, obliging, and a jovial table-companion, although belonging to a family in which they killed themselves, had a box at the Français; he used to lend it to Madame de Beaumont: I went four or five times to the play with M. de Fontanes and M. Joubert. When I entered the world, old-fashioned comedy was in all its glory; I found it again in a state of complete decomposition. Tragedy still kept up, thanks to Mademoiselle Duchesnois [417] and, above all, to Talma, who had attained the highest level of dramatic talent. I had seen him when he made his first appearances; he was less handsome and, so to speak, less young than at the age when I saw him again: he had acquired the distinction, the nobility, and the gravity of years.

The portrait of Talma which Madame de Staël has drawn in her work on Germany is only half true: the brilliant writer saw the great actor through a woman's imagination, and attributed to him what he lacked.

Of the intermediate world Talma did not know what to make: he did not understand the man of gentle birth; he did not know our old-time society; he had not sat at the table of high-born ladies, in the Gothic tower enshrined in the wood; he knew nothing of the flexibility, the variety of expression, the gallantry, the light charm of manner, the ingenuousness, the tenderness, the heroism based upon honour, the Christian devotion of chivalry: he was not Tancred, or Coucy, or at least he turned them into heroes of a middle-age of his own creation; his Othello was placed in the heart of Vendôme.

Then what was Talma? Himself, his century and antiquity. He had the deep and concentrated passions of love and of patriotism; they burst from his breast with the force of an explosion. He had the baleful inspiration, the deranged genius of the Revolution through which he had passed. The terrible spectacles with which he was once surrounded were renewed in his talent with the lamentable and distant accents of the choruses of Sophocles and Euripides. His grace, which was not conventional grace, took hold of you like misfortune. Dark ambition, remorse, jealousy, melancholy of soul, physical pain, madness produced by the gods and adversity, human affliction: those were what he knew. His mere entrance upon the stage, the mere sound of his voice were mightily tragic. Suffering and thought were mingled on his brow, breathed in his immovability, in his poses, his gestures, his steps. As a Greek, he would arrive, panting and ominous, from the ruins of Argos, an immortal Orestes, tormented for three thousand years by the Eumenides; as a Frenchman, he would come from the solitudes of Saint-Denis, where the Parcæ of 1793 had cut the thread of the sepulchral life of the Kings. The very picture of sorrow awaiting something unknown, but decreed by an unjust Heaven, he went his way, the galley-slave of fate, inexorably chained between fatality and terror.

Time casts an inevitable obscurity over the older dramatic masterpieces: its projected shadow changes the purest Raphaëls into Rembrandts [418]; but for Talma, a part of the marvels of Corneille and Racine would have remained unknown. Dramatic talent is a torch: it fires other half-extinguished torches and revives geniuses which enrapture you with their renewed splendour.

We owe to Talma the perfection of the actor's dress. But are stage realism and rigour of costume so necessary to art as is supposed? Racine's characters derive nothing from the cut of their clothes: in the pictures of the first painters, the back-grounds are neglected and the costumes incorrect. The "furies" of Orestes, or the "prophecies" of Joad, read in a drawing-room by Talma in a dress-coat, made as great an impression as when declaimed upon the stage by Talma in a Greek mantle or a Jewish robe. Iphigenia was attired like Madame de Sévigné, when Boileau addressed those fine verses to his friend:

Jamais Iphigénie en Aulide immolée
N'a coûté tant de pleurs à la Grèce assemblée
Que, dans l'heureux spectacle à nos yeux étalé,
N'en a fait sous son nom verser la Champmeslé [419].

This correctness in the representation of inanimate objects is the spirit of the arts of our time: it points to the decadence of lofty poetry and of the true drama; we are content with lesser beauties, when we are impotent to achieve the greater; we imitate armchairs and velvet to perfection, when we are no longer able to paint the expression of the man seated on that velvet and in those armchairs. Nevertheless, once one has descended to that truthfulness of material forms, one finds one's self obliged to reproduce it; for the public, itself materialized, demands it.

Comments on the Génie.

Meanwhile I was finishing the Génie du Christianisme: Lucien asked to see some of the proofs; I sent them to him; he added some rather common-place notes in the margins.

Although the success of my big book was as brilliant as that of my little Atala, it was nevertheless more widely contested: this was a serious work, in which I no longer fought the principles of the old literature and of philosophy with a novel, but attacked them directly with arguments and facts. The Voltairean empire uttered a cry and flew to arms. Madame de Staël was mistaken as to the future of my religious studies: they brought her the work uncut; she pushed her fingers between the pages, came upon the chapter headed the Virginité, and said to M. Adrien de Montmorency [420], who was with her:

"Oh Heavens! Our poor Chateaubriand! That will fall to the ground!"

The Abbé de Boulogne [421], who was shown some portions of my work before it was sent to press, said to the bookseller who asked his opinion:

"If you want to ruin yourself, print that."

And the Abbé de Boulogne has since written an all too splendid eulogy of my book.

Everything, in fact, seemed to prophesy failure. What hope could I have, I with no name and no extollers, of destroying the influence of Voltaire, which had prevailed for more than half a century, of Voltaire, who had raised the huge edifice completed by the Encyclopædists and consolidated by all the famous men in Europe? What! were the Diderots, the d'Alemberts, the Duclos [422], the Dupuis [423], the Helvétius [424], the Condorcets [425] minds that carried no authority? What! was the world to return, to the Golden Legend, to renounce the admiration it had acquired for masterpieces of science and reason? How could I ever win a case which Rome armed with its thunders, the clergy with its might, had been unable to save: a case defended in vain by the Archbishop of Paris, Christophe de Beaumont [426], supported by the decrees of the Parliament and the armed force and name of the King? Was it not as ridiculous as it was rash on the part of an unknown man to set himself against a philosophical movement so irresistible as to have produced the Revolution? It was curious to see a pygmy "toughen his little arms" to stifle the progress of a century, stop civilization, and thrust back the human race! Thank God, a word would be enough to pulverize the madman: wherefore M. Ginguené, when trouncing the Génie du Christianisme in the Décade[427] declared that the criticism came too late, since my tautologous production was already forgotten. He said this five or six months after the publication of a work which the attack of the whole French Academy, on the occasion of the decennial prizes, was not able to kill.

I publish my chief work.

It was amid the ruins of our temples that I published the Génie du Christianisme.[428] The faithful thought themselves saved: men at that time felt a need of faith, a thirsting for religious consolations, which arose from the want of those consolations experienced since long years. What supernatural strength was required to bear all the adversities undergone! How many mutilated families had to go to the Father of mankind in search of the children they had lost! How many broken hearts, how many solitary souls, were calling for a divine hand to cure them! One threw one's self into the house of God, as one enters a doctor's house on the outbreak of an infection. The victims of our disturbances (and how many different kinds of victims!) saved themselves at the altar: shipwrecked men clinging to the rock on which they seek for salvation.

Bonaparte, at that time hoping to found his power on the first basis of society, had just made arrangements with the Court of Rome: he at first raised no obstacle against the publication of a work calculated to enhance the popularity of his schemes; he had to struggle against the men about him and against the declared enemies of religion; he was glad therefore to be defended from the outside by the opinion called up by the Génie du Christianisme. Later, he repented him of his mistake; ideas of regular monarchy had sprung into being together with ideas of religion.

An episode in the Génie du Christianisme, which at the time caused less stir than Atala, fixed one of the characters of modern literature; but I may say that, if René did not exist, I should not now write it: if it were possible for me to destroy it, I would do so. A family of Renés, poets and prose-writers, has swarmed into being: we have heard nothing but mournful and desultory phrases; it has been a question of nothing but winds and storms, of unknown words directed to the clouds and the night. No scribbler fresh from college but has imagined himself the unhappiest of men; no babe of sixteen but has believed himself to have exhausted life and to be tormented by his genius, but has, in the abyss of his thoughts, abandoned himself to the "wave of his passions," struck his pale and dishevelled brow, and astonished stupefied mankind with a misfortune of which he did not know the name, nor they either.

In René I had laid bare one of the infirmities of my century; but it was a different madness in the novelists to try to make universal such transcendental afflictions. The general sentiments which compose the basis of humanity, paternal and maternal affection, filial piety, friendship, love, are inexhaustible; but particular ways of feeling, idiosyncrasies of mind and character, cannot be spread out and multiplied over wide and numerous scenes. The small undiscovered corners of the human heart are a narrow field; there is nothing left to gather in that field after the hand which has been the first to mow it. A malady of the soul is not a permanent nor natural state: one cannot reproduce it, make a literature of it, make use of it as of a general passion constantly modified at the will of the artists who handle it and change its form.

Be that as it may, literature became tinged with the colours of my religious paintings, even as public affairs have retained the phraseology of my writings on citizenship: the Monarchy according to the Charter has been the rudiment of our representative government, and my article in the Conservateur, on "Moral Interests and Material Interests," has bequeathed those two designations to politics.

Writers did me the honour of imitating Atala and René, in the same way that the pulpit borrowed my accounts of the missions and advantages of Christianity. The passages in which I show that, by driving the pagan divinities from the woods, our broader religion has restored nature to its solitudes; the paragraphs where I discuss the influence of our religion upon our manner of seeing a painting, where I examine the changes wrought in poetry and eloquence; the chapters which I devote to inquiries into the foreign sentiments introduced into the dramatic characters of antiquity contain the germ of the new criticism. Racine's characters, as I have said, both are and are not Greek characters: they are Christian characters; that is what no one had understood.

Effects of the publication.

If the effect of the Génie du Christianisme had been only a reaction against doctrines to which the revolutionary misfortunes were attributed, that effect would have ceased so soon as the cause was removed; it would not have been prolonged to the time at which I am writing. But the action of the Génie du Christianisme upon public opinion was not confined to the momentary resurrection of a religion supposed to be in its grave: a more lasting metamorphosis was operated. If the work contained innovations of style, it also contained changes of doctrine; not only the manner, but the matter, was altered; atheism and materialism were no longer the basis of the belief or unbelief of young minds; the idea of God and of the immortality of the soul resumed its empire: whence came an alteration in the chain of ideas linked one to the other. A man was no longer riveted to his place by an anti-religious prejudice; he no longer thought himself obliged to remain a mummy of annihilation, wrapped in philosophical swathing-bands; he permitted himself to examine any system, however absurd it might seem to him, even though it were Christian.

Besides the faithful who returned at the sound of their shepherd's voice, there were formed, by this right of free examination, other à priori faithful. Lay down God as a principle, and the Word will follow. The Son proceeds necessarily from the Father.

The various abstract combinations succeed only in substituting for the Christian mysteries other mysteries still more difficult of comprehension. Pantheism, which, besides, exists in three or four shapes, and which it is the fashion nowadays to ascribe to enlightened intelligences, is the absurdest of Eastern dreams brought back to light by Spinoza [429]. One has but to read the article by the sceptic Bayle [430] on that Jew of Amsterdam. The positive tone in which certain people speak of all these things would be revolting, were it not that it arises from want of study; they take up words which they do not understand, and imagine themselves to be transcendental geniuses. Be assured that Abélard, that St. Bernard, that St. Thomas Aquinas and their fellows brought to bear upon the study of metaphysics a superiority of judgment which we do not approach; that the Saint-Simonian [431], Phalansterian, Fourieristic [432], Humanitarian [433] systems were discovered and practised by the different heresies; that what is placed before us as progress and discovery is so much old lumber hawked about for fifteen centuries in the schools of Greece and the colleges of the Middle Ages. The misfortune is that the first sectaries could not succeed in founding their Neo-Platonic Republic, when Gallienus [434] permitted Plotinus [435] to make the experiment in Campania; later, people made the great mistake of burning the sectaries when they proposed to establish the community of goods and to pronounce prostitution holy, by urging that a woman cannot, without sin, refuse a man who asks of her a transient union in the name of Jesus Christ: all that was needed, said they, to accomplish this union was to annihilate one's soul and deposit it for a moment in the bosom of God.

The shock which the Génie du Christianisme gave to men's minds caused the eighteenth century to emerge from the old road and flung it for ever out of its path. People began again, or rather they began for the first time to study the sources of Christianity; on re-reading the Fathers (presuming that they had read them before) they were struck at meeting with so many curious facts, so much philosophical science, so many beauties of style of every kind, so many ideas which, by a more or less perceptible gradation, produced the transition from ancient to modern society: an unique and memorable era of humanity, in which Heaven communicates with earth through the medium of souls set in men of genius.

Beside the crumbling world of paganism there arose, in former times, as though outside society, another world, looking on at those great spectacles, poor, retiring, secluded, taking no part in the business of life except when its lessons or its succour were needed. It was a marvellous thing to see those early bishops, almost all honoured with the name of saints and martyrs, those simple priests watching over the relics and cemeteries; those monks and hermits in their convents or in their caves, laying down laws of peace, morals, charity, when all was war, corruption, barbarism; going between the tyrants of Rome and the leaders of the Tartars and Goths, to prevent the injustice of the former and the cruelty of the latter; stopping armies with a wooden cross and a peaceful word; the weakest of men, and protecting the world against Attila [436]; placed between two universes to be the link that joined them, to console the last moments of an expiring society and support the first steps of a society in its cradle.

My own criticism.

It was impossible but that the truths unfolded in the Génie du Christianisme should contribute to a change of ideas. Again, it is to this work that the present love for the buildings of the Middle Ages is due: it is I who have called upon the young century to admire the old temples. If my opinion has been misused; if it is not true that our cathedrals approach the Parthenon in beauty; if it is false that those churches teach us unknown facts in their documents of stone; if it is madness to maintain that those granite memories reveal to us things that escaped the learned Benedictines; if by dint of eternally repeating the word Gothic people grow wearied to death of it: that is not my fault. For the rest, with respect to the arts, I know the shortcomings of the Génie du Christianisme; that portion of my work is faulty, because, in 1800, I was not acquainted with the arts: I had not seen Italy, nor Greece, nor Egypt. Also, I did not make sufficient use of the lives of the saints and of the legends, although they offered me a number of marvellous instances: by selecting with taste, one could there reap a plentiful harvest. This field of the wealth of mediæval imagination surpasses the Metamorphoses of Ovid and the Milesian fables in fruitfulness. My work, moreover, contains some scanty or false judgments, such as that which I pronounce upon Dante, to whom I have since paid a brilliant tribute. In the serious respect, I have completed the Génie du Christianisme in my Études historiques, one of my writings that has been least spoken of and most plundered.

The success of Atala had delighted me, because my soul was still fresh; that of the Génie du Christianisme was painful to me: I was obliged to sacrifice my time to a more or less useless correspondence and to irrelevant civilities. A so-called admiration did not atone to me for the vexations that await a man whose name the crowd remembers. What good can supply the place of the peace which you have lost by admitting the public to your intimacy? Add to that the restlessness with which the Muses love to afflict those who attach themselves to their cult, the worries attendant upon a compliant character, inaptitude for fortune, loss of leisure, an uncertain temper, livelier affections, unreasonable melancholy, groundless joys: who, if he had the choice, would purchase on those conditions the uncertain advantages of a reputation which you are not sure of obtaining, which will be contested during your life, which posterity will refuse to confirm, and which your death will snatch from you for ever?

The literary controversy on innovations of style which Atala had aroused was renewed upon the publication of the Génie du Christianisme.

A characteristic feature of the imperial school, and even of the republican school, must be noted: while society advanced for better or for worse, literature remained stationary; foreign to the change of the ideas, it did not belong to its own time. In comedy, the squires of the village, the Colins, the Babets, or else the intrigues of the drawing-rooms, which were no longer known, were played, as I have already remarked, before coarse and blood-thirsty men, themselves the destroyers of the manners whose picture was presented to them; in tragedy, a plebeian pit interested itself in the families of nobles and kings.

Two things kept literature at the date of the eighteenth century: the impiety which it derived from Voltaire and the Revolution, and the despotism with which Bonaparte struck it. The head of the State found a profit in those subordinate letters which he had put in barracks, which presented arms to him, which sallied forth at the command of "Turn out, the guard!" which marched in rank, and which went through their evolutions like soldiers. Any form of independence seemed a rebellion against his power; he would no more consent to a riot of words and ideas than he suffered insurrection. He suspended the Habeas Corpus for thought as well as for individual liberty. Let us also recognise that the public, weary of anarchy, was glad to submit again to the yoke of law and order.

New forms in literature.

The literature which expresses the new era did not commence to reign until forty or fifty years after the time of which it was the idiom. During that half-century, it was employed only by the opposition. It was Madame de Staël, it was Benjamin Constant [437], it was Lemercier [438], it was Bonald, it was myself, in short, who were the first to speak that language. The alteration in literature of which the nineteenth century boasts came to it from the Emigration and from exile: it was M. de Fontanes who brooded on those birds of a different species from himself, because, by going back to the seventeenth century, he had gained the strength of that fertile period and lost the barrenness of the eighteenth. One portion of the human intelligence, that which treats of transcendental matters, alone advanced with an even step with civilisation; unfortunately, the glory of knowledge was not without stain: the Laplaces [439], the Lagranges [440], the Monges [441], the Chaptals [442], the Berthollets [443], all the prodigies, once haughty democrats, became Napoleon's most obsequious servants. Let it be said to the honour of Letters: the new literature was free, science was servile; character did not correspond with genius, and they whose thought had sped to the uppermost sky were not able to raise their souls above the feet of Bonaparte: they pretended to have no need of God, that was why they needed a tyrant.

The Napoleonic classic was the genius of the nineteenth century dressed up in the periwig of Louis XIV., or curled as in the days of Louis XV. Bonaparte had ordained that the men of the Revolution should not appear at Court save in full dress, sword at side. One saw nothing of the France of the moment; it was not order, it was discipline. Nor could anything be more tiresome than that pale resuscitation of the literature of former days. That cold copy, that unproductive anachronism, disappeared when the new literature broke in noisily with the Génie du Christianisme. The death of the Duc d'Enghien had for me this advantage that, by causing me to step aside, it left me free in my solitude to follow my own inspiration, and prevented me from enlisting in the regular infantry of old Pindus: I owed my moral to my intellectual liberty.

In the last chapter of the Génie du Christianisme, I discuss what would have become of the world if the Faith had not been preached at the time of the invasion of the Barbarians; in another paragraph, I speak of an important work to be undertaken on the changes which Christianity introduced in the laws after the conversion of Constantine [444].

Supposing religious opinion to exist in its present form, if the Génie du Christianisme were yet to be written, I would compose it quite differently: instead of recalling the benefits and the institutions of our religion in the past, I would show that Christianity is the thought of the future and of human liberty; that that redeeming and Messianic thought is the only basis of social equality; that it alone can establish the latter, because it places by the side of that equality the necessity of duty, the corrective and regulator of the democratic instinct. Legality is no sufficient restraint, because it is not permanent; it derives its strength from the law: now, the law is the work of men who pass away and differ. A law is not always obligatory; it can always be changed by another law: as opposed to that, morals are constant; they have their force within themselves, because they spring from the immutable order: they alone, therefore, can ensure permanency.

I would show that, wherever Christianity has prevailed, it has changed ideas, rectified notions of justice and injustice, substituted assertion for doubt, embraced the whole of humanity in its doctrines and precepts. I would try to conjecture the distance at which we still are from the total accomplishment of the Gospel, by calculating the number of evils that have been destroyed and of improvements that have been effected in the eighteen centuries which have elapsed on this side of the Cross. Christianity acts slowly, because it acts everywhere; it does not cling to the reform of any particular society, it works upon society in general; its philanthropy is extended to all the sons of Adam: that is what it expresses with a marvellous simplicity in its commonest petitions, in its daily prayers, when it says to the crowd in the temple:

"Let us pray for every suffering thing upon earth."

What religion has ever spoken in this way? The Word was not made flesh in the man of pleasure, it became incarnate in the man of sorrow, with a view to the enfranchisement of all, to an universal brotherhood and an infinite salvation.

If the Génie du Christianisme had only given rise to such investigations, I should congratulate myself on having published it. It remains to be seen whether, at the time of the appearance of the book, a different Génie du Christianisme, raised on the new plan the outline of which I have barely indicated, would have obtained the same success. In 1803, when nothing was granted to the old religion, when it was the object of scorn, when none knew the first word of the question, would one have done well to speak of future liberty as descending from Calvary, at a time when people were still bruised from the excesses of the liberty of the passions? Would Bonaparte have suffered such a work to appear? It was perhaps useful to stimulate regrets, to interest the imagination in a cause so misjudged, to call attention to the despised object, to render it endearing before showing how serious it was, how mighty and how salutary.

Now, supposing that my name leaves some trace behind it, I shall owe this to the Génie du Christianisme: with no illusion as to the intrinsic value of the work, I admit that it possesses an accidental value; it came just at the right moment. For this reason it caused me to take my place in one of those historic periods which, mixing an individual with things, compel him to be remembered. If the influence of my work was not limited to the change which, in the past forty years, it has produced among the living generations; if it still served to resuscitate among late-comers a spark of the civilizing truths of the earth; if the slight symptom of life which one seems to perceive was there sustained in the generations to come, I should depart full of hope in the divine mercy. O reconciled Christian, do not forget me in thy prayers, when I am gone; my faults, perhaps, will stop me outside those gates where my charity cried on thy behalf:

"Be ye lifted up, O eternal gates [445]!"

[361] This book was begun at Dieppe in 1836 and finished in Paris in 1837. It was revised in December 1846.—T.

[362] Anne Geneviève de Bourbon-Condé, Duchesse de Longueville (1619-1679), sister of the great Condé, had intrigued against the Court, and played a great part in the war of the Fronde (1648-1652). The escape took place in 1650. Eventually, Mazarin defeating all her intrigues, the Duchesse de Longueville withdrew into retirement and a convent—T.

[363] Queen Anne of Austria (1602-1666), daughter of King Philip III. of Spain, and wife of Louis XIII. of France, whom she married in 1615. She gave birth to Louis XIV. in 1638, after twenty-three years of marriage, and became Regent of the Kingdom on the death of Louis XIII. in 1643.—T.

[364] Henri de La Tour d'Auvergne, Maréchal Vicomte de Turenne (1611-1688), joined the Fronde on Madame de Longueville's persuasion, but returned to his allegiance the next year (1651). He was born a Protestant, was converted by Bossuet, but abjured the Catholic Faith in 1678.—T.

[365] François Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1605 or 1613-1680). He played a small part in the Fronde through his infatuation for Madame de Longueville. The Maxims were published in 1665, under the title of Réflexions et sentences, ou Maximes morales. He spent his old age in the society of Madame de La Fayette and Madame de Sévigné.—T.

[366] Marie Madeleine Comtesse de La Fayette (1634-1693), née Pioche de La Vergne, author of a number of successful novels and a History of Henrietta of England.—T.

[367] Charlotte Marguerite Princesse de Condé (1594-1650), née de Montmorency, and married in 1609 to Henry II. Prince de Condé, who removed her to Brussels out of the reach of King Henry IV. "That poor wretch," the Duchesse de Longueville, was her daughter.—T.

[368] Madame de Brienne was the wife of Henri Auguste Comte de Loménie de Brienne, author of the curious Memoirs.—T.

[369] Béranger, Le Vieux Caporal, 49, 50:

"Who is sobbing and weeping down yonder?
Ah, 'tis the drummer's widow so sad."—T.

[370] Béranger, Le Vieux Caporal, chorus:

"Conscripts, keep step; do not weep;
. . . Keep step, the step keep."—T.

[371] Jules Cardinal Mazarin (1602-1661), Prime Minister to the Regent Anne of Austria, and eventual victor over the Fronde.—T.

[372] The Duc de La Rochefoucauld left Mémoires sur la règne d'Anne d'Autriche, in addition to the Maximes.—T.

[373] Marie Caroline Ferdinande Louise Duchesse de Berry (1798-1870), daughter of King Ferdinand I. of Naples, and married to the Duc de Berry in 1816.—T.

[374] The Duchesse de Berry brought Dieppe into fashion in the later years of the Restoration; she visited it yearly, with her children, during the bathing season.—B.

[375] Rabelais.—Author's Note.

[376] Now the Place de la Concorde.—T.

[377] Migneret's book-shop was at No. 1186, Rue Jacob. The houses were at that time numbered by districts, not by streets.—B.

[378] "Both through his virtues and his charms
To be their father he deserved." —T.

[379] Étienne Gaspard Robertson (1762-1837), a professor of physics who perfected or improved the Archimedean mirror, the magic-lantern, and the parachute.—T.

[380] Now the Quai Malaquais.—T.

[381] The Theatines, or "Regular Clerks," a very strict congregation, founded in 1524 by St. Cajetan and Giovanni Pietro Caraffa, Bishop of Chieti, or Theate, from which the Order takes its name.—T.

[382] The Requisition was a sort of levy in mass decreed by the Committee of Public Safety on the 23rd of August 1793, and produced 1,400,000 men. It was the immediate forerunner of the Conscription.—T.

[383] The title of this letter was Lettre à M. de Fontanes sur la deuxième édition de l'ouvrage de Mme. de Staël (De la littérature considérée dans ses rapports avec la morale, etc.), and it was signed, l'Auteur du Génie du Christianisme. It was printed in the Mercure of 1 Nivoise Year IX. (22 December 1800), and now figures in all the editions of the Génie du Christianisme. It is one of Chateaubriand's most eloquent writings.—B.

[384] The letter appeared in the Journal des Débats of 10 Germinal Year IX. (31 March 1801).—B.

[385] The volume is announced as "just out" in the Journal des Débats of 27 Germinal (17 April). It was a small duodecimo, of XXIV. +210 pages, with the title Atala, ou les Amours de deux sauvages dans le désert.—B.

[386] Marie Marguerite Marquise de Brinvilliers (1630-1676), née Dreux d'Avray, a famous poisoner, who with her lover, Gaudin de Sainte-Croix, poisoned the marquise's father, sister, and two brothers. The crimes were discovered on the death of Sainte-Croix in 1670. The Brinvilliers took to flight, but was captured at Liège, brought back to Paris, and tried and executed in 1676.—T.

[387] A waxwork show established in the Palais-Royal and on the Boulevard du Temple in 1770 by a German who called himself Curtius. The establishment on the Boulevard du Temple remained open until the end of the reign of Louis-Philippe. The figures are still sometimes met with at village fairs.—B.

[388] Chaillot, which now forms part of Paris, was at that time a village at the gates, to the west, on the road to Versailles.—T.

[389] The Nouvelle Héloïse, Rousseau's most popular work, was published in 1759—T.

[390] Dr. Joseph Marie Joachim Vigaroux (1759-1829), a native of Montpellier, in Provence, and author of some medical works of no special value.—T.

[391] Marie Anne Elisa Bacciochi (1774-1820), Bonaparte's eldest sister, married Felix Pascal Prince Bacciochi in 1797. Her husband became Prince of Lucca and Piombino in 1805, Elisa exercising the real power; and in 1808 Napoleon made her Grand-duchess of Tuscany. She was dethroned in 1814, and assumed the title of Countess of Compignano. Prince Bacciochi died in Rome in 1841.—T.

[392] Lucien Bonaparte (1775-1840), Napoleon's second brother, created Prince of Canino in 1804, a prisoner in England from 1810 to 1814. He was twice married to ladies of middle-class family (vide infra), by whom he had eleven children.—T.

[393] François Joachim Cardinal de Pierres de Bernis (1715-1794), Anacreontic poet and religious controversialist. He had been Madame de Pompadour's lover, and owed his advancement to her. Voltaire called him Babet la Bouquetière, owing to the profusion of flowers of rhetoric which he employed in his verses.—T.

[394] Madame Lucien Bonaparte (d. 1800), née Christine Éléonore Boyer, married Lucien in 1794, and was the sister of the woman who kept the inn at Saint-Maximin, where Lucien, then under age, was staying. The marriage took place without the consent of Madame Bonaparte, the mother, and was invalid by French law. Lucien's second wife, whom he married in 1802, was Marie Alexandrine Charlotte Louise Laurence de Bleschamp (1778-1855), the divorced wife of Jean François Hippolyte Jouberthon, a retired stockbroker.—B.

[395] Louis Gabriel Amboise, Vicomte de Bonald (1753-1840), a distinguished monarchical writer, created a peer of France in 1823, and a member of the French Academy.—T.

[396] Charles Lioult de Chênedollé (1769-1833), author of the Génie de l'homme and other poems.—T.

[397] Pauline Marie Michelle Frédérique Ulrique de Montmorin-Saint-Hérem, Comtesse de Beaumont (1768-1803).—T.

[398] The Comte de Montmorin did not die on the scaffold, but was butchered at the Abbaye on the 2nd of September 1792. On the next day his cousin, Louis Victor Hippolyte Luce de Montmorin, had his throat cut at the Conciergerie, where he had been taken after his acquittal by the Criminal Tribunal on the 17th of August. Madame de Montmorin, Madame de Beaumont's mother, was guillotined on the 10th of May 1794; her second son was guillotined with her. Her daughter, wife of the Comte de La Luzerne, died on the 10th of July 1794, at the Archbishop's Palace, which had been turned into the prison hospital.—B.

[399] Madame Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun (1756-1842), née Vigée, the famous French portrait painter. She left nearly 700 portraits, in addition to some historical pictures and a crowd of landscapes.—T.

[400] Matthieu Louis Molé (1781-1855), created a Count of the Empire in 1813, when he became Minister of Justice, and held successive ministries under the Restoration and Louis-Philippe. He was a moderate statesman of much dignity of character and of great distinction of person, manners, and speech. He was elected a member of the French Academy in 1840.—T.

[401] Étienne Duc Pasquier (1767-1862), appointed Prefect of Police in 1810. After holding various ministerial offices under the Restoration, he was made President of the Chamber of Peers by Louis-Philippe in 1830, Chancellor in 1837, and a duke in 1844. Elected to the French Academy in 1842.—T.

[402] Louise Marie Victorine Comtesse de Chastenay-Lanty (1771-1855) was never married. Her title of madame is due to the fact that she became a canoness at an early age (1785). Her observation to Chateaubriand on the subject of Joubert will be found repeated in almost precisely the same words in Madame de Chastenay's recently-published Memoirs (1896), vol. II. p. 82.—T.

[403] Louis Bénoît Picard (1769-1828), an actor, theatrical manager, and author of some eighty stage-plays of varying merit. He was received into the French Academy in 1807.—T.

[404] In the "small company" which, at the beginning of the century, met in the drawing-room of Madame de Beaumont, in the Rue Neuve-du-Luxembourg, or at Chateaubriand's, in his little apartment in the Hôtel Coislin, on the Place Louis XV., or again, in the summer, at Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, under M. Joubert's roof, each one, according to an ancient fashion, had his nickname. Chateaubriand was called le chat, the "Cat," by way of abbreviation of his name, or possibly because of his illegible handwriting; Madame de Chateaubriand, who had claws, was the "She-cat." Chênedollé and Gueneau de Mussy, more melancholy than René, had received the names of the "Big" and the "Little Crow;" sometimes also Chateaubriand was called the "Illustrious Crow of the Cordilleras," by allusion to his travels in America. Fontanes was thickset, and had something athletic in his short stature. His friends jestingly compared him to the boar of Erymanthus, and called him the "Boar." Thin and slender, skimming over the earth which she was soon to leave, Madame de Beaumont had received the nickname of the "Swallow." Joubert, a lover of the woods, and at that time a great walker, was the "Stag;" while his wife, who was goodness and wit personified, but of a somewhat fierce humour, laughed when she was called the "She-wolf." Never was so intellectual a collection of "animals" seen before.—B.

[405] Madame Hocquart was a lady possessed of many charms of beauty and mind. She was the daughter of Pourrat and the sister of Madame Laurent Lecoulteux.—B.

[406] The Comtesse de Vintimille du Luc, née de La Live de Jully, was niece to Madame Hocquart.—B.

[407] Marie Duchesse de Chevreuse (1600-1679), née de Rohan-Montbazon, married in 1617 to Albert Duc de Luynes, Constable of France, and in 1622 to Claude de Lorraine, Duc de Chevreuse. The Duchesse de Chevreuse was a favourite of Anne of Austria, and is famed for her beauty and her wit.—T.

[408] Françoise d'Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon (1635-1719), the last mistress and eventual wife (1684-1685) of Louis XIV.—T.

[409] Madame Geoffrin (1699-1777), née Rodet, head of the famous literary salon in the Rue Saint-Honoré.—T.

[410] Marie Marquise du Deffant (1697-1780), née de Vichy-Chamroud, a celebrated leader of eighteenth-century society in France. Her correspondence with Walpole, Voltaire, d'Alembert, etc., was published in 1809 to 1811.—T.

[411] Antoine Hugues Calixte de Montmorin (1772-1794), guillotined 10th May 1794.—B.

[412] Margaret of Valois (1552-1615), Queen of France and Navarre, daughter of King Henry II. of France. She married in 1672 the Prince of Béarn, afterwards King of Navarre and of France (Henry IV.), who imprisoned her at Usson, in Auvergne, and eventually divorced her (1599). She left Memoirs of the period from 1565 to 1587, first published in 1658.—T.

[413] Philip II. (Augustus), King of France (1165-1223).—T.

[414] Kings XII. 23.—T.

[415] Chateaubriand and Madame de Beaumont took up their abode at Savigny on the 22nd of May 1801.—B.

[416] Antoine Athanase Roux de Laborie (1769-1840), a protégé of Talleyrand's, who attained to some distinction as a politician. He had been compromised in a Royalist conspiracy with the two brothers Bertin, with whom he afterwards founded the Journal des Débats.—T.

[417] Catherine Joséphine Rafin (1777-1835), known as Mademoiselle Duchesnois, made her first appearance in 1802 as Phèdre. She was an ugly woman, but a fine actress. She continued to play until 1830.—T.

[418] Paul Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1674); the allusion being to Rembrandt's famous distribution of light and shade.—T.

[419] "Ne'er did Iphigenia in Aulis laid dead
Cause so many tears in all Greece to be shed
As, in the fine spectacle shown us to-day,
We have wept at the bidding of our Champmeslé."

Marie Desmare (1644-1698), known as Mademoiselle Champmeslé, made her first appearance in 1669, and created the title-rôle in Racine's Iphigénie in 1674, under the poet's directions.—T.

[420] Anne Pierre Adrien Prince de Montmorency, later Duc de Laval (1767-1837), French Ambassador successively in Madrid (1814), Rome (1821), Vienna (1828), and London (1829). He became a member of the Chamber of Peers in 1820, in succession to his father, deceased, and resigned his peerage, together with his diplomatic functions, in 1830.—B.

[421] Étienne Antoine de Boulogne (1747-1825) was made Bishop of Troyes by Napoleon in 1808. In 1811, Bonaparte imprisoned him at Vincennes, until 1814, for protesting against the arrest of Pope Pius VII. He resumed his see under the Restoration, became Archbishop of Vienne in 1817, and was raised to the peerage in 1822.—T.

[422] Charles Pineau Duclos (1704-1772), admitted to the French Academy in 1747, and appointed its perpetual secretary in 1755, was author of the Considérations sur le Mœurs, etc., and took the leading part in the editing of the Dictionary.—T.

[423] Charles François Dupuis (1742-1809), member of the Institute and of the Academy of Inscriptions, and author of the Origine de tous les cultes, ou la Religion universelle.—T.

[424] Claude Adrien Helvétius (1715-1771), one of the leaders of the French philosophy of the eighteenth century, and author of the book De l'Esprit (1758), condemned by the Sorbonne, the Pope, and the Parliament of Paris, and burned by the public hangman in 1759.—T.

[425] Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet (1743-1794), perpetual secretary of the Academy of Science, and a principal contributor to the Encyclopædia. The best known of his voluminous works is the Esquisse des progrès de l'esprit humain. He was arrested as a Girondin, and poisoned himself in prison (28 March 1794).—T.

[426] Christophe de Beaumont (1703-1781), successively Bishop of Bayonne, Archbishop of Vienne, and Archbishop of Paris (1746), the redoubtable adversary of both the Jansenists and Philosophers.—T.

[427] In Nos. 27, 28, and 29 of the Year X. (1802) of the Décade philosophique, littéraire et politique. The articles were subsequently collected into a pamphlet.—B.

[428] It was published on the 24th of Germinal Year X. (14 April 1802), by Migneret, 28, rue du Sépulcre, Faubourg Saint-Germain and Le Normant, 43, rue des Prêtres-Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, in five volumes 8vo (the fifth volume consisting entirely of notes and elucidations), with the title, Génie du Christianisme, ou Beautés de la religion chrétienne, by François Auguste Chateaubriand. The first page of each volume bore the following epigraph, suppressed in the later editions:

"Chose admirable! la religion chrétienne, qui ne semble avoir d'objet que la félicité de l'autre vie, fait encore notre bonheur dans celle-ci."

Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois, XXIV., iii.—B.

[429] Baruch, or Benedict, Spinoza (1632-1677), the Portuguese-Jewish philosopher of Amsterdam. His system of pantheism is set forth in his Ethica and other works.—T.

[430] Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) was born a Protestant, became a Catholic, and then a professional sceptic. His reputation rests upon his famous Dictionnaire historique et critique (1697), with which he paved the way for Voltaire and his friends.—T.

[431] Claude Henri Comte de Saint-Simon (1760-1825) was the founder of a sect, based upon more or less Socialistic principles, extinguished by ridicule, and finally dissolved by the Courts for its attacks upon public morals in 1833. Its author attempted suicide in 1823, but escaped with the loss of an eye.—T.

[432] Charles Fourier (1768-1837) was the author of the Phalansterian movement, based upon the Communistic principle.—T.

[433] The system maintaining the simple humanity of Christ, and denying His divinity.—T.

[434] Publius Licinius Gallienus, Roman Emperor (233-268), gave leave to Plotinus to build a town in Campania, to be recalled Platonopolis; but the project fell through.—T.

[435] Plotinus (circa 205—circa 270) opened his school of Neo-Platonic philosophy in Rome about the year 245.—T.

[436] Attila, King of the Huns (d. 453), when descending into Italy in 452 after his defeat in France, was stopped outside Rome by Pope St. Leo the Great, who persuaded him to return back after exacting a tribute from the Emperor Valentinian III.—T.

[437] Henri Benjamin Constant de Rebecque (1767-1830), the well-known publicist and Liberal politician.—T.

[438] Népomucène Louis Lemercier (1772-1840), a member of the French Academy, and author of a number of plays and poems all of a remarkable character. The finest is his tragedy of Agamemnon. He was one of the first to break through Boileau's rule of the three unities in dramatic literature.—T.

[439] Pierre Simon Marquis de Laplace (1749-1827), a profound geometrician and a protégé of d'Alembert, was Minister of the Interior for six weeks after the 18 Brumaire, entered the Senate in 1799, and became President of that body. He was a member of the French Academy, and was created a marquis and a peer by Louis XVIII. on becoming its President (1817).—T.

[440] Joseph Louis Comte Lagrange (1736-1813), another famous mathematician. He was for twenty years President of the Berlin Academy (1766-1786). Napoleon made him a Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, a count, and a senator. He and Laplace may be said to have completed Newton's work.—T.

[441] Gaspard Monge, Comte de Péluse (1746-1818), a member of the Academy of Science, was for a month Minister of Marine under the Revolution (1792). During the wars of the Republic he devoted his knowledge to elaborating the national means of defense, was one of the founders of the Polytechnic School, accompanied Bonaparte to Egypt, and became President of the Cairo Institute. Napoleon gave him his title, created him a senator, and loaded him with honours, all of which he lost at the Restoration.—T.

[442] Jean Antoine Chaptal, Comte de Chanteloup (1756-1832), a distinguished chemist and statesman. He was placed at the head of the gunpowder factory at Grenelle in 1793, and there displayed an incredible activity. In 1798 he became one of the original members of the Institute, Minister of the Interior in 1800, a senator in 1805, and a peer of France under the Restoration (1819).—T.

[443] Claude Louis Comte Berthollet (1748-1822), another celebrated chemist, worked with Monge and Chaptal in the fabrication of gunpowder and the multiplication of the means of defense during the Republican wars. He also accompanied Bonaparte to Egypt, where he made many important researches. The Emperor made him a senator in 1805, and he received his peerage under the Restoration.—T.

[444] Constantine I. Emperor of the West (274-337), known as Constantine the Great, was converted, by a sign of the Cross in the sky, in the year 312.—T.

[445] Ps. XXIII. 7, 9.—T.

[BOOK II][446]

The years 1802 and 1803—Country-houses—Madame de Custine—M. de Saint-Martin—Madame de Houdetot and Saint-Lambert—Journey to the south of France—M. de la Harpe—His death—Interview with Bonaparte—I am appointed First Secretary of Embassy in Rome—Journey from Paris to the Savoy Alps—From Mont Cenis to Rome—Milan to Rome—Cardinal Fesch's palace—My occupations—Madame de Beaumont's manuscripts—Letters from Madame de Caud—Madame de Beaumont's arrival in Rome—Letters from my sister—Letter from Madame de Krüdener—Death of Madame de Beaumont—Her funeral—Letters from M. de Chênedollé, M. de Fontanes, M. Necker, and Madame de Staël—The years 1803 and 1804—First idea of my Memoirs—I am appointed French Minister to the Valais—Departure from Rome—The year 1804—The Valais Republic—A visit to the Tuileries—The Hôtel de Montmorin—I hear the death cried of the Duc d'Enghien—I give in my resignation.

My life became quite disturbed so soon as it ceased to belong to myself. I had a crowd of acquaintances outside my customary circle. I was invited to the country-houses which were being restored. One did as best he could in those half-unfurnished, half-furnished manor-houses, in which old arm-chairs and new stood side by side. Nevertheless, some of these manor-houses had remained intact, such as the Marais [447], which had come into the possession of Madame de La Briche [448], an excellent woman, whom happiness could never succeed in shaking off. I remember that my immortality went to the Rue Saint-Dominique d'Enfer to take a seat for the Marais in a wretched hired coach, where I met Madame de Vintimille and Madame de Fezensac [449]. At Champlâtreux [450] M. Molé was having some small rooms on the second floor rebuilt. His father [451], who had been killed in the revolutionary style, was replaced, in a dilapidated drawing-room, by a picture in which Matthieu Molé was represented stopping a riot with his square cap: a picture which brought home the difference in the times. A splendid intersection of roads lined with lime-trees had been cut down; but one of the avenues still remained in all the magnificence of its old shade; new plantations have since been mixed with it: this is the age of poplars.

On returning from the Emigration, there was no exile so poor but laid out the winding walks of an English garden in the ten feet of land or court-yard which he had recovered: did I myself, in days past, not plant the Vallée-aux-Loups? Was it not there that I began these Memoirs? Did I not continue them in Montboissier Park, whose appearance, disfigured by neglect, its owners were then trying to revive? Did I not lengthen them in the park at Maintenon [452], quite recently restored, a new prey for the returning democracy? The castles burnt in 1789 ought to have warned what remained of the castles to remain hidden in their ruins: but the steeples of engulfed villages which pierce through the lava of Vesuvius do not prevent new steeples and new hamlets from being planted on the surface of that same lava.

The Marquise de Custine.

Among the bees adjusting their hive was the Marquise de Custine [453], the heiress of the long tresses of Margaret of Provence [454], wife of St. Louis, whose blood flowed in her veins. I was present when she took possession of Fervacques [455], and I had the honour of sleeping in the bed of the Bearnese, as I had of sleeping in Queen Christina's [456] bed at Combourg. The journey was no trifling matter: we had to take on board the carriage Astolphe de Custine [457], then a child, M. Berstoecher, his tutor, an old Alsatian nurse, who spoke only German, Jenny, the lady's maid, and Trim, a famous dog which ate up the provisions for the journey. Would one not have thought that this colony was going to Fervacques for good? And yet the furnishing of the house was not quite finished when the signal for removal was given. I saw her who faced the scaffold with such great courage [458], I saw her, whiter than one of the Fates, dressed in black, her figure made thin by death, her head adorned only with her silken tresses; I saw her smile to me with her pale lips and her beautiful teeth when she left Sécherons, near Geneva, to breathe her last at Bex, at the entrance to the Valais; I heard her coffin pass at night along the deserted streets of Lausanne to take up its eternal place at Fervacques: she was hastening to hide herself in a property which she had possessed for but a moment, like her life. I had read on the corner of a chimney-piece in the château those bad rhymes attributed to the lover of Gabrielle:

La dame de Fervacques
Mérite de vives attacques [459].

The soldier-king had said as much to many others: passing declarations of men, soon effaced and descending from beauty to beauty down to Madame de Custine. Fervacques has been sold.

I also met the Duchesse de Châtillon [460], who adorned my valley at Aulnay during my absence in the Hundred Days. Mrs. Lindsay, whom I continued to see, introduced me to Julie Talma [461]. Madame de Clermont-Tonnerre invited me. We had a common grandmother, and she was good enough to call me cousin. The widow of the Comte de Clermont-Tonnerre [462], she was married again, later, to the Marquis de Talaru [463]. She had converted M. de La Harpe in prison. It was through her that I knew Neveu, the painter, who was enrolled among the number of her cicisbei: Neveu brought me into momentary connection with Saint-Martin [464].

M. de Saint-Martin thought he had discovered in Atala a certain cant which was far from my thoughts, but which to his mind proved an affinity of doctrine between us. Neveu, in order to bring two brothers together, asked us to dinner in a top room which he occupied in the out-houses of the Palais-Bourbon. I reached the trysting-place at six o'clock; the heavenly philosopher was at his post. At seven o'clock, a discreet man-servant placed a tureen of soup upon the table, withdrew, and closed the door. We sat down and began to eat in silence. M. de Saint-Martin, who, for the rest, had a very fine manner, pronounced only a few oracular phrases. Neveu replied with exclamations, uttered with a painter's attitudes and grimaces. I said not a word.

After half an hour, the necromancer returned, removed the soup, and placed another dish on the table. The courses succeeded each other in this way, one by one, and at long intervals. M. de Saint-Martin, becoming gradually more excited, began to talk after the manner of an archangel; the more he talked, the more obscure did his language become. Neveu had hinted to me, squeezing my hand, that we should see extraordinary things, that we should hear sounds. For six mortal hours I listened and discovered nothing. At midnight, the man of visions suddenly rose to his feet. I thought that the spirit of darkness or the heavenly spirit was descending, that the bells were about to ring out through the mysterious passages; but M. de Saint-Martin declared that he was exhausted, and that we would resume the conversation another time: he put on his hat and went away. Unhappily for himself, he was stopped at the door and obliged to come back by an unexpected visit: nevertheless he was not long in disappearing. I never saw him again: he went off to die in the garden of M. Lenoir-Laroche [465], my neighbour at Aulnay.

Swedenborgian nonsense.

I am a refractory subject for Swedenborgianism; the Abbé Faria [466], at a dinner at Madame de Custine's, boasted of being able to kill a canary by magnetizing it; the canary was the stronger of the two, and the abbé, beside himself, was obliged to leave the party for fear of being killed by the canary. The sole presence of myself, the Christian, had rendered the tripod powerless.

Another time, the celebrated Gall [467], again at Madame de Custine's, dined next to me, without knowing me, mistook my facial angle, took me for a frog, and tried, when he knew who I was, to patch up his science in a way which made me blush for him. The shape of the head can assist one in distinguishing the sex in individuals, in indicating what belongs to the beast, to the animal passions; as to the intellectual faculties, phrenology will never know them. If one could collect the different skulls of the great men who have died since the commencement of the world, and were to place them before the eyes of the phrenologists without telling them to whom they belonged, they would not forward one brain to its right address: the examination of the "bumps" would produce the most comical mistakes.

I feel conscience-smitten: I spoke of M. de Saint-Martin a trifle scoffingly; I am sorry for it. That love of scoffing, which I am constantly thrusting back and which incessantly returns to me, is a cause of suffering to me; for I hate the satirical spirit as being the pettiest, commonest, and easiest of all: of course, I am bringing no charge against high comedy. M. de Saint-Martin was, when all is said and done, a man of great merit, of noble and independent character. His ideas, when they were explicable, were lofty and of a superior nature. Ought I not to sacrifice the two foregoing pages to the generous and much too flattering declaration of the author of the Portrait de M. de Saint-Martin fait par lui-même [468]? I should not hesitate to suppress them, if what I say were able to do the smallest hurt to the serious reputation of M. de Saint-Martin and to the esteem which will always cling to his memory. I am glad, for the rest, to see that my recollection has not deceived me: M. de Saint-Martin may not have received quite the same impressions as myself at the dinner of which I speak; but you will see that I have not invented the scene, and that M. de Saint-Martin's account resembles mine at bottom:

"On the 27th of January 1803," he says, "I had an interview with M. de Chateaubriand at a dinner arranged for the purpose at M. Neveu's, in the Polytechnic School [469]. It would have been a great advantage to me to have known him earlier: he is the only irreproachable man of letters with whom I have come into contact in my existence, and even then I enjoyed his conversation only during the meal. For, immediately afterwards, there came a visit which made him dumb for the rest of the evening, and I do not know when the occasion will return, because the king of this world takes great care to put a spoke in the wheel of my cart. For the rest, of whom do I stand in need except God?"

M. de Saint-Martin is worth a thousand of me: the dignity of his last sentence crushes my harmless banter with all the weight of a serious nature.

I had seen M. de Saint-Lambert [470] and Madame de Houdetot [471] at the Marais. Both represented the opinions and the freedom of days gone by, carefully packed up and preserved: it was the eighteenth century dying and married after its own fashion. One need but hold on to life for unlawfulness to become lawful. Men feel an infinite esteem for immorality because it has not ceased to exist and because time has adorned it with wrinkles. In truth, a virtuous husband and wife, who are not husband and wife, but who remain together out of consideration for their fellow-creatures, suffer a little from their venerable condition; they bore and detest each other cordially with all the ill-humour of old age; that is God's justice:

Malheur à qui le ciel accorde de longs jours [472]!

Madame de Houdetot.

It became difficult to understand certain pages of the Confessions when one had seen the object of Rousseau's transports. Had Madame de Houdetot kept the letters which Jean Jacques wrote to her, and which he says were more brilliant than those in the Nouvelle Héloïse? It is believed that she made a sacrifice of them to Saint-Lambert.

When nearly eighty years of age, Madame de Houdetot still cried in agreeable verses:

Et l'amour me console!
Rien ne pourra me consoler de lui [473].

She never went to bed without striking the floor three times with her slipper and saying, "Good-night, dear!" to the late author of the Saisons. That was what the philosophy of the eighteenth century amounted to in 1803.

The society of Madame de Houdetot, Diderot, Saint-Lambert, Rousseau, Grimm [474], and Madame d'Épinay rendered the Valley of Montmorency insupportable to me, and though, with regard to facts, I am very glad that a relic of the Voltairean times should have come under my notice, I do not regret those times. I have lately again seen the house in which Madame de Houdetot used to live at Sannois; it is now a mere empty shell, reduced to the four walls. A deserted hearth is always interesting; but what can we gather from hearth-stones by whose side beauty has never sat, nor the mother of a family, nor religion, and whose ashes, if they were not dispersed, would carry back the memory only to days which were capable of nought save destruction?

A piracy of the Génie du Christianisme at Avignon took me to the south of France in the month of October 1802. I knew only my poor Brittany and the northern provinces through which I had passed when leaving my country. I was about to see the sun of Provence, the sky which was to give me a fore-taste of Italy and Greece, towards which my instinct and my muse alike urged me. I was in a happy mood; my reputation made life seem light to me: there are many dreams in the first intoxication of fame, and one's eyes at first become rapturously filled with the rising light; but should that light become extinguished, it leaves you in the dark: if it last, the habit of seeing it soon renders you unmindful of it.

Lyons pleased me extremely. I renewed my acquaintance with those works of the Romans which I had not seen since the day when I read some sheets of Atala out of my knapsack in the amphitheatre at Trèves. Sailing-boats crossed from one bank of the Saône to the other, carrying a light at night; they were steered by women; a sailor lass of eighteen who took me on board, at each turn of the helm, adjusted a nosegay of flowers badly fastened to her hat. I was awakened in the morning by the sound of bells. The convents poised upon the slopes seemed to have recovered their solitary inmates. The son of M. Ballanche [475], the owner, after M. Migneret, of the Génie du Christianisme, had become my host: he has become my friend. Who does not know to-day the Christian philosopher whose writings glow with that placid clearness on which one loves to fix his eyes, as on the ray of a friendly star in the sky?

On the 27th of October the post-barge which was taking me to Avignon was obliged to stop at Tain, owing to a storm. I thought myself in America: the Rhone reminded me of my great wild rivers. I was put into a little river-side inn; a conscript was standing at the chimney-corner; he had his sack on his back, and was on his way to join the Army of Italy. I wrote with the bellows of the chimney for a table, opposite the landlady, who sat silently before me and showed her regard for the traveller by preventing the dog and cat from making a noise. What I was writing was an article which I had almost finished while going down the Rhone, and which related to M. de Bonald's Législation primitive. I foresaw what has since come to pass:

"French literature," I said, "is about to change its aspect; with the Revolution new thoughts will come into being, new views of men and things. It is easy to foresee that our writers will become divided. Some will strive to leave the beaten paths; others will try to copy the old models, while nevertheless displaying them in a new light. It is very probable that the latter will end by getting the better of their adversaries, because, in leaning upon the great traditions and the great men, they will have surer guides and more fruitful documents."

The lines ending my travelling criticism are history; my mind was beginning to move with my century:

"The author of this article," I said, "cannot resist an image drawn from the circumstances in which he finds himself placed. At the very moment at which he is writing these concluding words he is descending one of the greatest rivers of France. On two opposite mountains stand two ruined towers; at the top of those towers are fastened little bells, which the mountaineers ring as we pass. This river, those mountains, those sounds, those Gothic monuments, divert the eyes of the spectators for a moment; but not one stops to go whither the bell-tower calls him. Thus the men who to-day preach morality and religion in vain give the signal from the top of their ruins to those whom the torrent of the age carries with it; the traveller is amazed at the grandeur of the ruins, at the sweetness of the sounds that issue from them, at the majesty of the memories that rise above them, but he does not interrupt his journey, and at the first turn in the stream all is forgotten [476]."

Avignon.

When I arrived at Avignon, on the eve of All Saints' Day, a child hawking books offered them to me: I then and there bought three different pirated editions of a little novel called Atala. By going from one bookseller to the other, I unearthed the pirate, to whom I was not known. He sold me the four volumes of the Génie du Christianisme at the reasonable price of nine francs per copy, and praised both book and author highly to me. He lived in a fine house standing in its own grounds. I thought I had made a great discovery: after four-and-twenty hours, I grew weary of following fortune, and made terms for next to nothing with the robber.

I saw Madame de Janson, a little wizened, white-haired, determined woman, who struggled with the Rhone for her estate, exchanged musket-shots with the inhabitants of the banks, and defended herself against the years.

Avignon reminded me of my fellow-countryman. Du Guesclin was good for more than Bonaparte, because he rescued France from her conquerors. On reaching the city of the Popes with the adventurers whom his glory was leading to Spain, he said to the provost sent by the Pontiff to meet him:

"'Brother, do not deceive me: whence comes that treasure? Has the Pope taken it from his treasure?'

"And he answered no, and that the commons of Avignon had paid it, each his portion.

"'Then, provost,' said Bertrand, 'I promise you that we will not take a farthing of it as we live, and wish that this money got together be restored to them that paid it, and tell the Pope that he have it restored to them; for if I knew that any other were done, it would lie heavy on me; and had I crossed the sea, yet would I return thence.'

"Thus was Bertrand paid with the Pope's money, and his folk absolved again, and the said first absolution again confirmed."

In former days Avignon was considered the commencement of a Transalpine journey: it was the entrance to Italy. The geographies say:

"The Rhone belongs to the King, but the City of Avignon is watered by a branch of the river, the Sorgue, which belongs to the Pope."

Is the Pope very certain of long preserving the ownership of the Tiber? At Avignon they used to visit the Celestine [477] monastery. Good King René [478], who reduced the taxes when the tramontane wind blew, had painted a skeleton in one of the halls of the Celestine monastery: it was that of a woman of great beauty whom he had loved [479].

I looked for the Palace of the Popes and was shown the ice-house: the Revolution has done away with celebrated places; the memories of the past are obliged to shoot up through it and to reblossom over dead bones [480]. Alas, the groans of the victims die soon after them! They scarcely reach some echo that causes them to survive a little while after the voice from which they issued is extinguished for ever. But, while the cry of sorrow was expiring on the banks of the Rhone, one heard in the distance the sound of Petrarch's lute: a solitary canzone, escaping from the tomb, continued to charm Vaucluse [481] with an immortal melancholy and the love sorrows of olden time.

Alain Chartier [482] had come from Bayeux to be buried at Avignon in the Church of St. Anthony. He had written the Belle Dame sans mercy, and the kiss of Margaret of Scotland [483] made him live.

Marseilles.

From Avignon I went to Marseilles. What is left to be desired by a town to which Cicero addressed these words, of which the oratorical manner was imitated by Bossuet:

"Nor will I forget thee, O Massilia, who in virtue and dignity shouldst rank not only before Greece, but for aught I know before the whole world [484]!"

Tacitus, in the Life of Agricola, also praises Marseilles as combining the Greek urbanity with the economy of the Latin provinces. Daughter of Hellas, foundress of Gaul, celebrated by Cicero, captured by Cæsar, is not that sufficient glory united? I hastened to climb to Notre Dame de la Garde, to admire the sea which the smiling coasts of all the famous countries of antiquity line with their ruins. The sea, which does not move, is the source of mythology, even as the ocean, which rises twice a day, is the abyss to which Jehovah said:

"Thou shalt go no farther [485]."

In this same year, 1838, I climbed again to that summit; I saw again that sea which I now know so well, and at the end of which rose the Cross and the Tomb victorious. The mistral was blowing; I went into the fort built by Francis I., where no longer a veteran of the army of Egypt kept guard, but where stood a conscript destined for Algiers and lost under the gloomy vaults. Silence reigned in the restored chapel, while the wind moaned without. The hymn of the Breton sailors to Our Lady of Succour returned to my mind; you know when and how I have already quoted that plaint of my early ocean days:

Je mets ma confiance,
Vierge, en votre secours.

How many events it had needed to bring me back to the feet of the "Star of the Sea," to whom I had been vowed in my childhood! When I gazed at those votive offerings, those paintings of ship-wrecks hung all around me, it was as though I were reading the story of my life. Virgil places the Trojan hero beneath the Porches of Carthage, moved at the sight of a picture representing the burning of Troy, and the genius of the singer of Hamlet has made use of the soul of the singer of Dido.

I no longer recognised Marseilles at the foot of that rock once covered with a forest sung by Lucan: I could no longer lose my way in its long, wide, straight streets. The harbour was crowded with ships; thirty-six years ago I should with difficulty have found a "boat," steered by a descendant of Pytheas [486], to carry me to Cyprus like Joinville [487]: time rejuvenates cities, reversing its action upon men. I preferred my old Marseilles, with its memories of the Bérengers [488], the Duke of Anjou [489], King René, Guise and d'Épernon [490], with the monuments of Louis XIV. and the virtues of Belsunce [491]: the wrinkles on its brow pleased me. Perhaps, in regretting the years which it has lost, I but bewail those which I have found. Marseilles received me graciously, it is true; but the rival of Athens has grown too young for me.

If the Memoirs of Alfieri [492] had been published in 1802 I should not have left Marseilles without visiting the rock from which the poet used to bathe. That rugged man once succeeded in attaining the charm of reverie and of expression:

"After the performance," he writes, "one of my amusements, at Marseilles, was to bathe almost every evening in the sea; I had found a very agreeable spot, on a neck of land situated to the right of the harbour, where, seated on the sand, with my back leaning against a rock, which prevented me from being seen from the land side, I could behold the sky and sea without interruption. Between those two immensities, embellished by the rays of the setting sun, I passed delicious hours dreaming of future delights; and there I might unquestionably have become a poet, could I have given any language whatever to my thoughts and feelings [493]."

Jean Reboul.

I returned through Languedoc and Gascony. At Nîmes, the Arena [494] and the Maison Carrée [495] had not yet been extricated: in the present year, 1838, I have seen them exhumed. I have also looked up Jean Reboul [496]. I had my doubts concerning those workmen poets, who are generally neither poets nor workmen: I owe M. Reboul a reparation. I found him in his bakery; I spoke to him without knowing whom I was addressing, failing to distinguish him from his fellow-worshippers of Ceres. He took my name and said he would go and see if the person for whom I was asking was there. He returned soon after and introduced himself: he took me into his shop; we wended our way through a labyrinth of flour-sacks, and clambered up a sort of ladder into a little closet resembling the upper room of a wind-mill. There we sat down and talked. I was as happy as in my garret in London, and happier than in my ministerial armchair in Paris. M. Reboul drew a manuscript from a chest of drawers, and read me some powerful verses from a poem which he is writing on the Dernier Jour. I congratulated him on his religion and his talent [497].

I had to take leave of my host, not without wishing him the gardens of Horace. I would have better loved to see him dream beside the Cascade at Tivoli than gather the wheat crushed by the wheel above that cascade. It is true that Sophocles was perhaps a blacksmith in Athens, and that Plautus, in Rome, was a harbinger of Reboul at Nîmes [498].

Between Nîmes and Montpellier, I passed, on my left, Aigues-Mortes, which I have visited in 1838. This town is still quite intact, with its towers and its surrounding rampart; it resembles a large ship stranded on the sands where St. Louis, time and the sea have left it. The Saint-king gave "usages" and statutes to the town of Aigues-Mortes:

"He wills that the prison be such that it serve not for the extermination of the person, but for its safe-keeping; that no information be granted for mere injurious words; that adultery itself be not enquired into, except in certain cases; and that he who violates a maid, volente vel nolente, shall not lose his life, nor any of his members, sed alio modo puniatur."

At Montpellier I again saw the sea, to which I would gladly have written in the words of the Most Christian King to the Swiss Confederation: "My trusty ally and well-beloved friend." Scaliger [499] would have liked to make Montpellier "the nest of his old age." It received its name from two virgin saints, Mons puellarum: hence the beauty of its women. Montpellier [500], falling before the Cardinal de Richelieu, witnessed the death of the aristocratic constitution of France.

On the road from Montpellier to Narbonne, I had a return to my native disposition, an attack of my dreaminess. I should have forgotten that attack if, like certain imaginary invalids, I had not entered the day of my crisis on a tiny bulletin, the only note of that time which I have found to aid my memory. This time it was an arid space covered with fox-gloves that made me forget the world: my eyes glided over that sea of purple stalks, and encountered at the distance only the blue chain of the Cantal Mountains. In nature, with the exception of the sky, the sea and the sun, it is not the immense objects that inspire me; they give me only a sensation of greatness, which flings my own littleness distraught and disconsolate at the feet of God. But a flower which I pick, a stream of water hiding among the rushes, a bird alternately flying and resting before my eyes lead me on towards all kinds of dreams. Is it not better to be moved for no definite reason than to go through life seeking blunted interests, chilled by their repetition and their number? All is worn out nowadays, even misfortune.

At Narbonne I reached the Canal des Deux-Mers [501]. Corneille, singing this work, adds his own greatness to that of Louis XIV.[502]

Toulouse.

At Toulouse, from the bridge over the Garonne, I could see the line of the Pyrenees; I was to cross it four years later: our horizons succeed one another like our days. They offered to show me, in a cave, the dried body of Fair Paule [503]: blessed are they that have not seen and have believed! Montmorency [504] had been beheaded in the courtyard of the town-hall: that head struck off must have been very important, since they still speak of it after so many other heads have been taken off? I do not know if, in the history of criminal proceedings, there exists an eye-witness' evidence which has more clearly established a man's identity:

"The fire and smoke which covered him," said Guitaut, "prevented me from recognising him; but seeing a man who, after breaking six of our ranks, was still killing soldiers in the seventh, I thought that it could be only M. de Montmorency; I knew it for certain when I saw him thrown to the ground under his dead horse."

The deserted Church of St. Sernin impressed me by its architecture. This church is connected with the history of the Albigenses, which the poem so well translated by M. Fauriel [505] revives:

"The gallant young count, his father's heir and the light of his eyes, with the cross and the sword, enter together by one of the doors. Not a single young girl remains in chamber or on landing; the inhabitants of the town, great and small, all come out to gaze upon the count as on a fair and blooming rose."

It is to the time of Simon de Montfort [506] that the loss of the langue d'Oc dates back:

"Simon, seeing himself lord of so many lands, bestowed them among the gentle men, both French and others, atque loci leges dedimus," say the eight signatory archbishops and bishops.

I should have liked to have had time to inquire at Toulouse after one of my great admirations, Cujas [507], writing, flat on the ground, with his books spread around him. I do not know whether the memory has been preserved of his twice-married daughter Suzanne. Constancy had no great attractions for Suzanne, she set it at naught; but she kept one of her husbands alive with the same infidelities which caused the other's death. Cujas was protected by the daughter of Francis I.[508], Pibrac by the daughter of Henry II.[509]: two Margarets of the blood of the Valois, the true blood of the Muses. Pibrac [510] is famous through his quatrains, which have been translated into Persian. I was perhaps lodged in the house of the president his father. That "good Lord of Pibrac," according to Montaigne, was "a man of so quaint and rare wit, of so sound judgment, and of so mild and affable behaviour." His mind was "so dissonant and different in proportion from our deplorable corruption, and so farre from agreeing with our tumultuous stormes [511]." And Pibrac wrote the apology of St. Bartholomew's Night!

I hurried on without being able to stop: fate threw me back to 1838 to admire in detail the city of Raimond de Saint-Gilles [512], and to speak of the new acquaintances I made there: M. de Lavergne [513], a man of talent, wit, and sense; Mademoiselle Honorine Gasc [514], the Malibran of the future. The latter reminded me, in my new quality of a follower of Clémence Isaure [515], of those verses which Chapelle and Bachaumont [516] wrote in the isle of Ambijoux, near Toulouse:

Hélas! que l'on serait heureux
Dans ce beau lieu digne d'envie,
Si, toujours aimé de Sylvie,
On pouvait, toujours amoureux,
Avec elle passer sa vie [517]!

Let Mademoiselle Honorine be on her guard against her beautiful voice! Talents are "gold of Toulouse:" they bring misfortune.

Bordeaux.

Bordeaux was as yet scarce rid of its scaffolds and its dastardly Girondins. All the towns which I saw had the appearance of beautiful women lately risen from a violent malady, and hardly commencing to breathe again. In Bordeaux, Louis XIV. had caused the Palais des Tutelles to be razed, in order to build the Chateau Trompette [518]; Spon [519] and the lovers of antiquity groaned:

Pourquoi démolit-on ces colonnes des dieux,
Ouvrage des Césars, monument tutélaire [520]?

There were but a few remains of the Arena to be seen. Were we to offer a token of regret to all that falls, life would be too short for our tears.

I took ship for Blaye. I saw the castle, then unknown, to which in 1833 I addressed these words:

"O captive of Blaye [521], I am sorrow-stricken to be able to do nothing to forward your present destinies!"

I travelled towards Rochefort, and went on to Nantes through the Vendée.

This district bore the mutilations and scars due to its valour, like an old warrior. Bones bleached by time and ruins blackened by fire met the gaze. When the Vendeans were on the point of attacking the enemy, they knelt down to receive the blessing of a priest. Prayers uttered under arms were not reckoned as weakness, for the Vendean who raised his sword towards Heaven asked for victory, not for life.

The diligence in which I found myself interred was full of travellers who related the rapes and murders with which they had glorified their lives in the wars of the Vendée. My heart throbbed when, after crossing the Loire at Nantes, we entered Brittany. I passed by the College of Rennes, which witnessed the last years of my childhood. I was able to remain for only four-and-twenty hours with my wife and sisters, and I returned to Paris.

I arrived in time for the death of a man who belonged to those superior names of the second rank in the eighteenth century which, forming a solid rear-line in society, gave it a certain fulness and consistency.

I had known M. de La Harpe in 1789: like Flins, he had become smitten with a great passion for my sister, Madame la Comtesse de Farcy. He used to come up with three large volumes of his works under his little arms, quite astounded to find that his glory did not triumph over the most rebellious hearts. Loud-voiced, and eager in manner, he thundered against every abuse, ordered an omelette to be made for him at the ministers' houses when the dinner had not been to his taste, eating with his fingers, dragging his cuffs in the dishes, talking philosophical scurrilities to the greatest lords, who doted on his impertinences; but, when all was said, his was an upright and enlightened mind, impartial amid all its passions, with a quick sense for talent, capable of admiration, of shedding tears over fine poetry or a fine action, and possessing a foundation fit to support repentance. He was not wanting at the end; I saw him die the death of a brave Christian, with his taste enlarged by religion, and retaining no pride except as against impiety, no hatred except that of "Revolutionary language [522]."

Death of M. de La Harpe.

On my return from the Emigration, religion had disposed M. de La Harpe in favour of my works: the illness which attacked him did not prevent him from working himself; he read me passages from a poem which he was writing on the Revolution [523]; in it occurred notably some pithy lines directed against the crimes of the age and the "worthy men" who had permitted them:

Mais s'ils ont tout osé, vous avez tout permis:
Plus l'oppresseur est vil, plus l'esclave est infâme [524].

Forgetting that he was ill, dressed in a wadded spencer, with a white cotton night-cap on his head, he recited with all his might; then, dropping his copy-book, he said in a voice that hardly reached the ear:

"I can't go on; I feel a grip of iron in my side."

And if, unfortunately, a maid-servant should happen to pass by, he would resume his stentorian voice and roar:

"Go away! Shut the door!"

I said to him one day:

"You will live for the good of religion."

"Ah, yes," he replied, "it would certainly be for God; but He does not wish it, and I shall die within these few days."

Falling back into his chair, and drawing his night-cap over his ears, he expiated his former pride by his present resignation and humility.

At a dinner at Migneret's, I had heard him speak of himself with the greatest modesty, declaring that he had done nothing out of the common, but that he believed that art and the language had not degenerated in his hands.

M. de La Harpe quitted this life on the 11th of February 1803; the author of the Saisons died almost at the same time, fortified with all the consolations of philosophy, as M. de La Harpe died fortified with all the consolations of religion: the one was visited by men, the other by God.

M. de La Harpe was buried on the 12th of February 1803 in the cemetery at the Barrière de Vaugirard. The coffin was placed beside the grave on the little mound of earth that was soon to cover it, and M. de Fontanes delivered a funeral oration. It was a dismal scene: whirling snow-flakes fell from the clouds and covered the pall with white, while the wind blew it upwards, to allow the last words of friendship to reach the ears of death. The cemetery has been destroyed and M. de La Harpe disinterred: there was hardly anything left of his poor ashes. M. de La Harpe had been married under the Directory, and had not been happy with his beautiful wife; she had been seized with loathing at the sight of him, and had persisted in refusing him any of his rights [525].

For the rest, M. de La Harpe, like everything else, had diminished by the side of the Revolution, which was ever growing in dimensions: reputations hastily shrank away before the representative of that Revolution, even as dangers lost their power before him.

While we were engrossed with vulgar life and death, the gigantic progress of the world was being realized; the Man of the Time was taking the head of the table at the banquet of the human race. Amid vast commotions, precursors of the universal displacement, I had landed at Calais to bear my part in the general action, within the limits set to each soldier. I arrived, in the first year of the century, at the camp where Bonaparte was beating the destinies to arms: soon after, he became First Consul for life.

After the adoption of the Concordat by the Legislative Body in 1802, Lucien, then Minister of the Interior, gave an entertainment to his brother; I was invited, as having rallied the Christian forces and led them back to the charge. I was in the gallery when Napoleon entered: he struck me pleasantly; I had never seen him except at a distance. His smile was beautiful and caressing; his eyes were admirable, owing especially to the manner in which they were placed beneath his forehead and framed in his eyebrows. There was as yet no charlatanism in his glance, nothing theatrical or affected. The Génie du Christianisme, which was then making a great stir, had worked upon Napoleon. A prodigious imagination animated that so frigid politician: he would not have been what he was, if the Muse had not been there; reason but carried out the poet's ideas. All those men who lead the large life are always a compound of two natures, for they must be capable of inspiration and of action: one conceives the plan, the other accomplishes it.

The First Consul.

Bonaparte saw me and recognised me, I know not by what. When he turned in my direction no one knew whom he was making for; the ranks opened successively; each hoped that the Consul would stop at him; he appeared to feel a certain impatience with those misconceptions. I hid behind my neighbours; suddenly Bonaparte raised his voice and said:

"Monsieur de Chateaubriand!"

I then remained standing out alone, for the crowd withdrew, and soon formed again in a circle around the speakers. Bonaparte addressed me with simplicity: without paying me any compliments, without idle questions, without preamble, he spoke to me at once of Egypt and the Arabs, as though I had been one of his intimates, and as though he were only continuing a conversation already commenced between us.

"I was always much impressed," he said, "when I saw the sheiks fall on their knees in the middle of the desert, turn towards the East, and touch the sand with their foreheads. What was that unknown thing which they worshipped in the East?"

Bonaparte interrupted himself and broached another idea without any transition:

"Christianity! Have not the ideologists tried to make a system of astronomy of it? And if that should be so, do they think they can persuade me that Christianity is small? If Christianity is the allegory of the movement of the spheres, the geometry of the stars, the free-thinkers may say what they please: in spite of themselves, they have still left tolerable greatness to 'the infamous thing.'"

Incontinently Bonaparte moved away. As with Job, in my night "a spirit passed before me, the hair of my flesh stood up. There stood one whose countenance I knew not ... and I heard the voice as it were of a gentle wind [526]."

My days have been but a series of visions; Hell and Heaven have continually opened up beneath my feet or over my head, without giving me time to explore their darkness or their light. One single time, on the shore of the two worlds, I met the man of the last and the man of the new century: Washington and Napoleon. I conversed for a moment with each; both sent me back to solitude: the first through a kindly wish, the second through a crime.

I observed that, when going round among the crowd, Bonaparte cast deeper glances on me than those which he had fixed upon me while talking to me. I too followed him with my eyes:

Chi è quel grande che non par che curi
L'incendio [527]?

In consequence of this interview, Bonaparte thought of me for Rome: he had decided at a glance where and how I could be of use to him. It mattered little to him that I had no experience of public affairs, that I was entirely unacquainted with practical diplomacy; he believed that a given mind always understands and has no need of apprenticeship. He was a great discoverer of men: but he wished them to possess talent only for him, and even then on condition that that talent was not much discussed; jealous of every renown, he regarded it as an usurpation over his own: there was to be none save Napoleon in the universe.

Fontanes and Madame Bacciochi spoke to me of the pleasure the Consul had found in "my conversation:" I had not opened my mouth; that meant that Bonaparte was pleased with himself. They urged me to avail myself of fortune. The idea of being anything had never occurred to me; I flatly refused. Then they persuaded an authority to speak whom it was difficult for me to resist.

The Abbé Émery [528], the superior of the Seminary of Saint-Sulpice, came and entreated me, in the name of the clergy, to accept, for the good of religion, the post of first secretary to the embassy which Bonaparte had reserved for his uncle, Cardinal Fesch [529]. He gave me to understand that the cardinal's intelligence was not very remarkable and that I should soon find myself the master of affairs. A singular chance had brought me into connection with the Abbé Émery: I had crossed to the United States with the Abbé Nagat and several seminarists, as you know. That remembrance of my obscurity, my youth, my life as a traveller, which reflected itself in my public life, seized hold of my imagination and my heart. The Abbé Émery, who was esteemed by Bonaparte, was subtle by nature and by reason of his cloth and of the Revolution; but he used that threefold subtlety only on behalf of his true merit; ambitious only to do good, he acted only in the most prosperous circle of a seminary. Circumspect as he was in his actions and words, it would have been superfluous to do violence to the Abbé Émery, for he always held his life at your disposal, in exchange for his will, which he never surrendered: his strength lay in waiting for you, seated on his tomb.

I am sent to Rome.

He failed in his first attempt; he returned to the charge, and his patience ended by persuading me. I accepted the place which he had been commissioned to offer me, without being in the smallest degree convinced of my usefulness in the post to which I was called: I am no good at all in the second rank. I might perhaps have again withdrawn, if the thought of Madame de Beaumont had not come to put an end to my scruples. M. de Montmorin's daughter was dying; she had been told that the climate of Italy would be favourable to her; if I went to Rome she would make up her mind to cross the Alps. I sacrificed myself to the hope of saving her. Madame de Chateaubriand prepared to come to join me; M. Joubert spoke of accompanying her; and Madame de Beaumont set out for Mont-Dore [530], in order afterwards to complete her cure on the banks of the Tiber.

M. de Talleyrand [531] occupied the Ministry for Foreign Affairs; he sent me my nomination. I dined with him: he has always maintained in my mind the place which he occupied at our first meeting. For the rest, his fine manners made a contrast with those of the ruffians of his environment; his profligacy assumed an astounding importance: in the eyes of a brutal gang, moral corruption seemed genius, frivolity profundity. The Revolution was over-modest; it did not sufficiently appreciate its superiority: it is not the same thing to stand above crimes or beneath them.

I saw the ecclesiastics attached to the cardinal's person; I remarked the gay Abbé de Bonnevie [532]: formerly, in his capacity as chaplain to the Army of the Princes, he had taken part in the retreat from Verdun; he had also been grand-vicar to the Bishop of Châlons, M. de Clermont-Tonnerre [533], who set out behind us in order to claim a pension from the Holy See, in his quality as a "Chiaramonte [534]." So soon as my preparations were completed I started: I was to precede Napoleon's uncle to Rome.

In Lyons I again saw my friend M. Ballanche. I witnessed the revival of Corpus Christi: I felt as though I had in some way contributed to those posies of flowers, to that joy of Heaven which I had called back to earth.

I continued my journey, finding a cordial welcome wherever I went: my name was linked with the restoration of the altars. The keenest pleasure which I have experienced has been to feel myself honoured in France and abroad with marks of serious interest. It has sometimes happened that, while resting in a village inn, I saw a father and mother enter with their son: they told me they were bringing their child to thank me. Was it self-conceit that then gave me the pleasure of which I speak? How did it affect my vanity that lowly and honest people should give me a token of their satisfaction on the high-road, in a place where none overheard them? What did touch me, at least I venture to think so, was that I had done some little good, consoled a few distressed, caused the hope to revive in a mother's yearnings of bringing up a Christian son: that is to say, a submissive son, respectful, attached to his parents. Should I have tasted this pure joy if I had written a book which morals or religion would have had cause to bewail?

My journey to Rome.

The road is somewhat dreary on leaving Lyons: after leaving the Tour-du-Pin, as far as Pont-de-Beauvoisin, it is shady and wooded. At Chambéry, where Bayard's chivalrous soul showed itself so fine, a man was welcomed by a woman, and by way of payment for the hospitality received at her hands, thought himself philosophically obliged to dishonour her. That is the danger of literature: the desire to make a stir gets the better of generous sentiment; if Rousseau had never become a celebrated writer, he would have buried in the valleys of Savoy the frailties of the woman who had fed him; he would have sacrificed himself to the very faults of his friend; he would have relieved her in her old age, instead of contenting himself with giving her a snuff-box and running away. Ah, may the voice of friendship betrayed never be raised against our tombstones!

After passing Chambéry, one comes to the stream of the Isère. On every hand, in the valleys, one meets with road-side crosses and lady-statues fixed in the trunks of the pine-trees. The little churches, surrounded with trees, form a touching contrast with the great mountains. When the winter whirlwinds come sweeping down from those ice-laden summits, the Savoyard takes shelter in his rustic temple and prays.

The valleys which one enters above Montmélian are hemmed by mountains of different shapes, sometimes half bare, sometimes clad in forests. Aiguebelle seems to shut in the Alps; but, on turning round an isolated rock, fallen in the middle of the road, you catch sight of new valleys attached to the course of the Arc. The mountains on either side stand erect; their flanks become perpendicular; their barren summits begin to display a few glaciers: torrents come rushing down to swell the Arc, which runs madly along. Amid this tumult of the waters, one remarks a light cascade which falls with infinite grace beneath a curtain of willows.

After crossing Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne I arrived towards sunset at Saint-Michel, and found no horses. I was obliged to stop, and went for a stroll outside the village. The air became transparent on the ridge of the mountains; their denticulation was outlined with extraordinary clearness, while a great darkness, issuing from their feet, rose towards their crests. The note of the nightingale was heard below, the cry of the eagle above; the blossoming lote-tree stood in the valley, the white snow on the mountain. A castle, popularly believed to be the work of the Carthaginians, showed upon the sheer-cut redan. There, incorporated with the rock, had stood one man's hatred, overcoming all obstacles. The vengeance of the human race weighed down upon a free people, which was able to build its greatness only with the slavery and blood of the rest of the world.

I left at day-break and arrived at about two o'clock in the afternoon at Lans-le-Bourg, at the foot of Mont Cenis. On entering the village, I saw a peasant who held an eaglet by the feet; a pitiless band struck the young king, insulted his youthful weakness and fallen majesty; the father and mother of the noble orphan had been killed. They offered to sell him to me: he died of the ill-treatment to which he had been subjected before I was able to deliver him. I then remembered poor little Louis XVII.; to-day I think of Henry V.: what swiftness of downfall and misfortune!

Here one begins to ascend Mont Cenis and leave the little River Arc, which brings you to the foot of the mountain. On the other side of Mont Cenis, the Dora opens the entrance of Italy to you. Rivers are not only "moving high-roads," as Pascal calls them, but they also mark the road for men.

Standing for the first time on the summit of the Alps, I was seized with a strange emotion. I was like the lark which had just crossed the frozen upland, and which, after singing its little burden of the plains, had alighted amid the snows, instead of dropping down upon the harvest. The stanzas with which those mountains inspired me in 1822 reflect with some accuracy my feeling on the same spot in 1803:

Alpes, vous n'avez point subi mes destinées!
Le temps ne vous peut rien;
Vos fronts légèrement ont porté les années
Qui pèsent sur le mien.
Pour la première fois, quand, rempli d'espérance,
Je franchis vos remparts,
Ainsi que l'horizon, un avenir immense
S'ouvrait à mes regards.
L'Italie à mes pieds, et devant moi le monde [535]!

That world, have I really penetrated into it? Christopher Columbus saw an apparition which showed him the land of his dreams before he had discovered it; Vasco de Gama met the giant of the storms on his road: which of those two great men presaged my future? What I should have loved above all would have been a life glorious through a brilliant result, and obscure through its destiny. Do you know which were the first European ashes to rest in America? They were those of Bjorn the Scandinavian: he died on landing at Winland, and was buried by his companions on a promontory. Who knows that [536]? Who knows of him whose sail preceded the vessel of the Genoese pilot to the New World? Bjorn sleeps on the point of an unknown cape, and since a thousand years his name has been handed down to us only by the sagas of the poets, in a language no longer spoken.

Italy.

I had begun my wanderings in an opposite direction to that of other travellers. The old forests of America had displayed themselves to me before the old cities of Europe. I happened upon the latter when they were at the same time renewing their youth and dying in a fresh revolution. Milan was occupied by our troops; they were completing the demolition of the castle, that witness to the wars of the Middle Ages.

The French army was settling in the plains of Lombardy as a military colony. Guarded here and there by their comrades on sentry, these strangers from Gaul, with forage-caps on their heads and sabres by way of reaping-hooks over their round jackets, presented the appearance of gay and eager harvesters. They moved stones, rolled guns, drove waggons, ran up sheds and huts of brushwood. Horses pranced, curveted, reared among the crowd, like dogs fawning on their masters. Italian women sold fruit on their flat baskets at the market of that armed fair; our soldiers made them presents of their pipes and steels, saying to them as the ancient barbarians, their ancestors, said to their beloved:

"I, Fotrad, son of Eupert, of the race of the Franks, give to thee, Helgine, my dear wife, in honour of thy beauty (in honore pulchritudinis tuæ), my dwelling in the quarter of the Pines [537]."

We are curious enemies: we are at first considered rather insolent, rather too gay, too restless; but we have no sooner turned our backs than we are regretted. Lively, witty, intelligent, the French soldier mixes in the occupations of the inhabitant on whom he is billeted: he draws water at the well, as Moses did for the daughters of Madian, drives away the shepherds, takes the lambs to the washing-place, chops the wood, lights the fire, watches the pot, carries the baby in his arms, or sends it to sleep in its cradle. His good humour and activity put life into everything; one grows to look upon him as a conscript of the family. Does the drum beat? The lodger runs to his musket, leaves his host's daughters weeping on the threshold, and quits the cabin of which he will never think again until he is admitted to the Invalides.

On my passage through Milan, a great people aroused was for a moment opening its eyes. Italy was recovering from her sleep, and remembering her genius as it were a heavenly dream: useful to our reviving country, she brought to the shabbiness of our poverty the grandeur of the Transalpine nature, nurtured as she was, that Ausonia, on the master-pieces of the arts and the lofty reminiscences of the famous motherland. Austria has come; she has again laid her cloak of lead over the Italians; she has forced them back into their coffin. Rome has re-entered her ruins, Venice her sea. Venice sank down, while beautifying the sky with her last smile; she set all charming in her waves, like a star doomed to rise no more.

General Murat was in command at Milan. I had a letter for him from Madame Bacciochi. I spent the day with the aides-de-camp; these were not so poor as my comrades before Thionville. French politeness reappeared under arms; it was bent upon showing that it still belonged to the days of Lautrec [538].

I dined in state, on the 23rd of June, with M. de Melzi [539], on the occasion of the christening of a son of General Murat [540]. M. de Melzi had known my brother; the manners of the Vice-President of the Cisalpine Republic were distinguished; his household resembled that of a prince who had never been anything else. He treated me politely and coldly; he found me in exactly the same disposition as himself.

First glimpses of Rome.

I reached my destination on the evening of the 27th of June, the day before the eve of St. Peter's Day [541]. The Prince of Apostles was awaiting me, even as my indigent patron [542] received me since at Jerusalem. I had followed the road of Florence, Siena, and Radicofani. I hastened to go to call upon M. Cacault [543], whom Cardinal Fesch was succeeding, while I was replacing M. Artaud [544].

On the 28th of June, I ran about all day, and cast a first glance upon the Coliseum, the Pantheon, the Trajan Column, and the Castle of St. Angelo. In the evening, M. Artaud took me to a ball at a house in the neighbourhood of the Piazza San-Pietro. One saw the fiery girandole of the dome of Michael Angelo in between the whirling waltzes spinning before the open windows; the rockets of the fireworks on the Molo d'Adriano spread out brilliantly at Sant' Onofrio, over Tasso's tomb: silence, solitude and night filled the Roman Campagna.

The next day, I assisted at the St. Peter's Mass. Pius VII.[545], pale, sad and religious, was the real pontiff of tribulations. Two days later I was presented to His Holiness: he made me sit beside him. A volume of the Génie du Christianisme lay open, in an obliging fashion, upon his table. Cardinal Consalvi [546], supple and firm, gently and politely resistant, was the living embodiment of the old Roman policy, minus the faith of those days and plus the tolerance of the century.

When going through the Vatican, I stopped to contemplate those staircases which one can ascend on mule-back, those sloping galleries folding one upon the other, adorned with master-pieces, along which the popes of old used to pass with all their pomp, those loggie decorated by so many immortal artists, admired by so many illustrious men, Petrarch, Tasso, Ariosto, Montaigne, Milton, Montesquieu, and queens and kings, mighty or fallen, and a whole people of pilgrims from the four quarters of the globe: all that now without movement or sound; a theatre whose deserted tiers, open to solitude alone, are scarce visited by a ray of the sun.

I had been advised to take a walk by moonlight: from the top of the Trinità-del-Monte, the distant buildings looked like a painter's sketches or like softened coast-lines seen from the deck of a ship at sea. The orb of night, that globe supposed to be an extinct world, turned its pale deserts above the deserts of Rome; it cast its light upon streets without inhabitants, closes, squares, gardens where none passed, monasteries where the voices of the cenobites were no longer heard, cloisters as mute and desolate as the porticoes of the Coliseum.

What happened, eighteen centuries ago, at this very hour and in this very spot? What men have here crossed the shadow of those obelisks, after that shadow had ceased to fall upon the sands of Egypt? Not only is Ancient Italy no more, but the Italy of the Middle Ages has disappeared. Nevertheless, traces of the two Italies still linger in the Eternal City: where modern Rome shows its St. Peter's and its master-pieces, ancient Rome boasts its Pantheon and its remains; where, on the one hand, the consuls walked down from the Capitol, on the other, the pontiffs issued from the Vatican. The Tiber separates the two glories: seated in the same dust, pagan Rome sinks deeper and deeper into its tombs, and Christian Rome glides slowly into its catacombs.

Cardinal Fesch had hired the Palazzo Lancelotti, not far from the Tiber: I have since seen the Principessa Lancelotti there, in 1828. The top floor of the palace was allotted to me; when I entered, so large a number of fleas hopped on to my legs that my white trousers were quite black with them. The Abbé de Bonnevie and I did the best we could to get our lodging washed down. I had a feeling as though I had returned to my kennel in the New Road; this memory of my poverty was not altogether unpleasant. Once settled in this diplomatic corner, I began to deliver pass-ports and to busy myself with functions of similar importance. My handwriting was an obstacle to my talents, and Cardinal Fesch shrugged his shoulders whenever he saw my signature. As I had almost nothing to do in my aerial chamber, I looked across the roofs at some washing-girls in a neighbouring house, who made signs to me; a future opera-singer, practising her voice, persecuted me with her everlasting solfeggio; I was happy when some funeral passed by for a change! From my lofty window I saw, in the abyss of the street below, the convoy of a young mother: she was carried, her face uncovered, between two files of white pilgrims; her new-born babe, dead too and crowned with flowers, lay at her feet.

My work at the embassy.

I committed a great mistake: I very innocently believed it my duty to call upon illustrious personages; I coolly went and paid the tribute of my respects to the ex-King of Sardinia [547]. This unusual proceeding caused a terrible hubbub; the diplomatists all drew themselves up.

"He is lost! he is lost!" whispered all the train-bearers and attachés, with the charitable pleasure which men take in the mishaps of any of their fellow-creatures. No diplomatic dunce but thought himself superior to me by the full height of his stupidity. Every one hoped for my fall, notwithstanding that I was nobody and counted as nobody; no matter, it was some one who fell, and that is always agreeable. I, in my simplicity, had no notion of my crime, nor, as ever since, would I have given a straw for any place whatever. Kings, to whom I was believed to attach so great an importance, had in my eyes only that of misfortune. My shocking blunders were reported from Rome to Paris: luckily I had to do with Bonaparte; what should have been my ruin saved me.

However, if at once and at the first leap to become First Secretary of Embassy under a prince of the Church, an uncle of Napoleon, seemed something, it was nevertheless as though I had been a copying-clerk in a prefect's office. In the contests that were at hand, I might have found work; but I was initiated into no mysteries. I was perfectly satisfied to be set to the litigious business of the chancellerie: but what was the use of wasting my time over details within the capacity of all the clerks?

On returning from my long walks and my rambles along the Tiber, all that I found to interest me was the cardinal's parsimonious worrying, the heraldic boasting of the Bishop of Châlons, and the incredible lying of the future Bishop of Morocco [548]. The Abbé Guillon, taking advantage of a similarity between his name and one almost identical in sound, pretended that he was the man who, after escaping by a miracle from the massacre at the Carmes, gave absolution to Madame de Lamballe [549] at the Force. He bragged that he had been the author of Robespierre's speech to the Supreme Being. I bet one day that I would make him say that he had been to Russia: he did not quite agree to this, but he modestly confessed that he had spent a few months in St. Petersburg.

M. de La Maisonfort [550], a man of intelligence, then in hiding, applied to me for assistance, and soon M. Bertin the Elder [551], proprietor of the Débats, helped me with his friendly offices in a painful circumstance. Exiled to the island of Elba by the man who, when himself returned from Elba, drove him to Ghent, M. Bertin, in 1803, had obtained from the Republican M. Briot [552], whom I have known, leave to complete his exile in Italy. With him I visited the ruins of Rome, and was present at the death of Madame de Beaumont: two things which have connected his life with mine. A refined critic, he gave me, as did his brother, excellent advice about my works. Had he been elected to Parliament, he would have shown a real talent for oratory. He had long been a Legitimist, had undergone the trial of imprisonment in the Temple and transportation to Elba, and his principles have in reality remained the same. I will be true to the companion of my sad days; it would be paying too high a price for all the political opinions of the world to sacrifice one hour of sincere friendship: it is enough that my opinions will never vary, and that I shall remain attached to my memories.

The Princesse Borghèse.

About the middle of my stay in Rome, the Princesse Borghèse [553] arrived; I had some shoes to deliver to her from Paris. I was presented to her; she made her toilet in my presence; the slippers which she put on her young and pretty feet were but for a moment to tread this ancient soil.

At last a sorrow came to give me occupation: we can always rely upon that resource.

At the time of my departure from France we had greatly blinded ourselves regarding Madame de Beaumont's condition; she cried much, and her will has proved that she believed herself to be condemned. Nevertheless her friends, refraining from communicating their fears to one another, sought to console each other; they believed in the miraculous powers of the waters, to be perfected later by the Italian sun; they separated and took different roads; appointments were made in Rome.

Fragments written by Madame de Beaumont in Paris, at Mont-Dore, in Rome, and discovered among her papers, display her state of mind:

"PARIS.

"For some years past my health has been perceptibly declining. Symptoms which I thought to be the signal for departure have supervened before I am ready to depart. The illusions increase as the illness progresses. I have seen many examples of that singular weakness, and I perceive that they will avail me nothing. Already I find myself taking remedies which are as irksome as they are insignificant, and I shall doubtless have no greater strength to protect myself against the cruel remedies with which they never fail to martyrize those condemned to die of consumption. Like the others, I shall abandon myself to hope: to hope! Can I, then, wish to live? My past life has been a series of misfortunes, my present life is full of excitements and disturbances: peace of mind has fled from me for ever. My death would be a momentary sorrow to a few, a boon to others, and the greatest of boons to myself.

"This 21st of Floréal, 10 May, is the anniversary of the death of my mother and brother:

Je péris la dernière et la plus misérable [554]!

Illness of madame de Beaumont.

"Oh, why have I not the courage to die? This illness, which I was almost weak enough to dread, has subsided, and perhaps I am condemned still to live long; it seems to me, nevertheless, that I would gladly die:

Mes jours ne valent pas qu'il m'en coûte un soupir [555].

"None has more cause than I to complain of nature: by refusing me everything, it has given me the sense of all I lack. At every moment I feel the weight of the complete mediocrity to which I am condemned. I know that self-content and happiness are often the price of this mediocrity of which I complain so bitterly; but by not adding to it the gift of illusion, nature, in my case, has turned it into a torture. I am like a fallen creature who cannot forget what he has lost, and who has not the force to recover it. That absolute lack of illusion, and hence of enthusiasm, is the cause of my unhappiness in a thousand ways. I judge myself as a stranger might do, and I see my friends as they are. My only value lies in an extreme kindness of heart, which is not active enough to command appreciation, nor to be of any real use, and which loses all its charm owing to the impatience of my character: my suffering from the misfortunes of others is greater than my power to relieve them. Nevertheless, I owe to it the few real joys that have occurred in my life; I owe to it especially my ignorance of envy, the common attribute of conscious mediocrity."

"Mont Dore.

"I had intended to enter into a few details concerning myself, but ennui causes the pen to drop from my fingers.

"All the bitterness and painfulness of my position would change to happiness if I were sure that I had but a few months to live.

"Even if I had the strength myself to end my sorrows in the only possible way, I should not exert it: it would be defeating my own intention, showing the measure of my suffering, and leaving too grievous a wound in the heart which I have deemed worthy to sustain me in my trials.

"I 'beseech myself in tears' to take a step which is as rigorous as it is inevitable. Charlotte Corday says that 'every act of self-sacrifice bestows more pleasure in the execution than it has cost pain in the conception;' but her death was near at hand, and I may still live long. What will become of me? Where can I hide? What tomb shall I choose? How can I shut out hope? What power can block up the door?

"To go away in silence, to court oblivion, to bury myself for ever, that is the duty laid upon me which I hope to have the courage to fulfill. If the cup is too bitter, once I am forgotten, nothing can compel me to empty it to the dregs, and who knows but my life may, after all, not be so long as I fear.

"If I had decided upon the place of my retirement, I believe I should be more calm; but the difficulty of the moment adds to the difficulties that arise from my weakness, and it requires something supernatural to act against one's self with vigour, to treat one's self as harshly as a violent and cruel enemy could do."

"Rome, 28 October.

"During the past ten months I have never ceased to suffer. During the last six, all the symptoms of consumption, and some in the last degree: I lack only the illusions, and maybe I have some!"

M. Joubert, alarmed at this desire for death which was torturing Madame de Beaumont, addressed these words to her in his Pensées:

"Love life and respect it, if not for its own sake, at least for that of your friends. In whatever state your own may be, I shall always prefer to know that you are occupied in spinning it out rather than in tearing it to pieces."

At the same time my sister was writing to Madame de Beaumont. I have the correspondence, which death placed in my hands. The poetry of the ancients pictures one of the Nereids as a flower floating on the deep; Lucile was that flower. In comparing her letters with the fragments just quoted, one is struck by the similarity of heart-heaviness expressed in the different language of those unhappy angels. When I think that I have lived in the company of such minds as those, I am surprised at my own insignificance. My eyes never light without bitter grief upon those pages written by two superlative women, who vanished from this earth at a short distance one from the other.

"Lascardais, 30 July.

"I was so much charmed, madame, at last to receive a letter from you that I did not allow myself the time to have the pleasure of reading it through at once: I interrupted its perusal to go and tell all the inmates of this house that I had heard from you, without considering that my gladness is of but little importance here, and that hardly anyone even knows that I am in correspondence with you. Seeing that I was surrounded by indifferent faces, I went back to my room, and determined to be glad by myself. I sat down to finish reading your letter, and, although I have read it over many times, in truth, madame, I do not know the whole contents. The joy which I constantly feel at the sight of this so long desired letter interferes with the attention which I ought to give to it.

Letters from Lucile.

"And so you are going away, madame? Do not, once you have reached Mont-Dore, forget your health; give it all your care, I entreat you, with all the fervour and affection of my heart. My brother has written to me that he hopes to see you in Italy. Fate and nature alike are pleased to distinguish him from me in a very favourable manner. But at least I will not yield to my brother the happiness of loving you: that I will share with him all my life. Alas, madame, how oppressed and downcast is my heart! You cannot know the good your letters do me, the contempt with which they inspire me for my ills! The idea that you think of me, that you are interested in me, exalts my courage extraordinarily. Write to me therefore, madame, so that I may cherish an idea so essential to me.

"I have not yet seen M. Chênedollé; I long greatly for his arrival. I shall be able to tell him of you and of M. Joubert: that will be a great pleasure to me. Allow me, madame, once more to urge you to think of your health, the bad condition of which incessantly afflicts me and occupies my thoughts. How can you not love yourself? You are so lovable and so dear to all: have the justice, then, to do much for yourself.

"Lucile."

"2 September.

"What you tell me, madame, of your health alarms and saddens me; however, I reassure myself by thinking of your youth and remembering that, although you are very delicate, you are full of life.

"I am disconsolate at your being in a country which you do not like. I would wish to see you surrounded with objects calculated to distract and to cheer you. I hope that, when your health recovers, you will become reconciled to Auvergne: there is no spot incapable of presenting some beauty to such eyes as yours. I am now living at Rennes: my loneliness suits me fairly well. I change my residence frequently, madame, as you see; it looks much as though I were out of place on the earth: in reality, it is long since I first began to look upon myself as one of its superfluous products. I believe, madame, that I spoke to you of my sorrows and perturbations. At present, all that is over, and I enjoy an inward peace of which none has it any longer in his power to rob me. In spite of my age, having, through circumstances and taste, almost constantly led a solitary life, I knew nothing whatever, madame, of the world: I have at last made that disagreeable acquaintance. Fortunately, reflection came to my aid. I asked myself in what way that world could be so formidable and where lay the worth of a world which can never, in evil and good alike, be aught but an object of pity. Is it not true, madame, that man's judgment is as shallow as the rest of his being, as changeable and of an incredulity as great as its ignorance? All these reasons, good or bad, have enabled me to fling behind me with ease the fantastic garment in which I had arrayed myself. I found myself full of sincerity and strength; I am no longer capable of being troubled. I am working with all my might to recover possession of my life, to obtain entire control of it.

"You must also, madame, believe that I am not too much to be pitied, since my brother, the best part of myself, is agreeably placed, and since I have eyes left with which to admire the marvels of nature, God for my support, and for an asylum a heart full of peace and gentle memories. If you have the kindness, madame, to continue to write to me, that will be a great added happiness to me."

Mystery of style, a mystery everywhere perceptible, nowhere present; the revelation of a painfully privileged nature; the ingenuousness of a girl whom one might imagine to be in her first youth; and the humble simplicity of a genius unaware of its own power, all breathe out of these letters, a large number of which I have suppressed. Did Madame de Sévigné write to Madame de Grignan with a more grateful affection than Madame de Caud to Madame de Beaumont? "Her tenderness might well pretend to keep pace with her own." My sister loved my friend with all the passion of the tomb, for she felt that she was going to die. Lucile had hardly ever left the neighbourhood of the Rochers [556]; but she was the daughter of her century and the Sévigné of solitude.

A letter from M. Ballanche, dated 30 Fructidor, informed me of the arrival of Madame de Beaumont, who had come from Mont Dore on her way to Italy. He told me that I need not fear the misfortune which I dreaded, and that the health of the sufferer seemed to be improving. On reaching Milan, Madame de Beaumont met M. Bertin, who had been called there on business: he had the kindness to take charge of the poor traveller and to escort her to Florence, where I had gone to meet her. I was shocked at the sight of her. She had but sufficient strength left to smile. After a few days' rest, we left for Rome, travelling at a foot-pace, in order to avoid the jolting. Madame de Beaumont received assiduous attentions everywhere: a charm interested you in this lovable woman, so suffering and so forlorn. The very maids at the inns gave way to this sweet commiseration.

Mournful days.

My feelings may be easily guessed: we have all accompanied friends to the grave, but they were mute, and no remnant of inexplicable hope came to render your sorrow more keen. I no longer saw the fine landscape through which we passed. I had taken the Perugian road: what was Italy to me? I still thought her climate too severe, and, if the wind blew ever so little, its breezes seemed storms to me. At Terni, Madame de Beaumont spoke of going to see the cascade; she made an effort to lean on my arm, and sat down again, saying:

"We must leave the waters to flow without us."

I had hired for her in Rome a lonely house near the Piazza d'Espagna, at the foot of the Monte Pincio [557]; it had a little garden with orange-trees growing against the walls, and a court-yard in which stood a fig-tree. There I set down my dying charge. I had had much difficulty in procuring this retreat, for there is a prejudice in Rome against diseases of the chest, which are considered as infectious.

At that period of the revival of social order, all that had belonged to the old monarchy was sought after. The Pope sent to inquire after the daughter of M. de Montmorin; Cardinal Consalvi and the members of the Sacred College followed His Holiness' example; Cardinal Fesch himself showed Madame de Beaumont, to the day of her death, marks of deference and respect which I should not have expected of him. I had written to M. Joubert of the anxiety with which I was torn before Madame de Beaumont's arrival:

"Our friend writes to me from Mont Dore," I said, "letters that shatter my soul: she says that she feels 'that there is no more oil in the lamp;' she speaks of 'the last throbs of her heart.' Why was she left alone on this journey? Why did you not write to her? What will become of us if we lose her? Who will console us for her? We realize the value of our friends only at the moment when we are threatened with their loss. We are even mad enough, when all is well, to think that we can leave them with impunity. Heaven punishes us; it snatches them from us, and we are appalled at the solitude which they leave around us. Forgive me, my dear Joubert: to-day I feel as though my heart were twenty years old; this Italy has made me young again; I love all that is dear to me with the same vehemence as in my early years. Sorrow is my element: I am myself again only when I am unhappy. My friends at present are of so rare a sort that the mere dread of seeing them taken from me freezes my blood. Bear with my lamentations: I am sure you are as unhappy as I. Write to me, and write also to that other Breton unfortunate."

At first, Madame de Beaumont felt a little relieved. The sufferer herself began again to believe in her life. I had the satisfaction of thinking that at least Madame de Beaumont would not leave me again: I expected to take her to Naples in the spring, and from there to send in my resignation to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. M. d'Agincourt [558], that true philosopher, came to see the light bird of passage, which had stopped at Rome before proceeding to the unknown land; M. Boquet, already the oldest of our painters, called. These relays of hope kept up the sufferer, and lulled her with an illusion which at the bottom of her soul she no longer retained. Letters, cruel to read, expressing hopes and fears, reached me from every side. On the 4th of October, Lucile wrote to me from Rennes:

Letters from Lucile.

"I commenced a letter for you the other day; I have just made a useless search for it; in it I spoke to you of Madame de Beaumont, and complained of her silence towards me. Dear, what a sad, strange life I have led for some months! And the words of the prophet are constantly recurring to my mind: 'He will crown thee with tribulation, he will toss thee like a ball [559].' But let us leave my troubles and speak of your anxieties. I cannot persuade myself that they are justified. I always see Madame de Beaumont full of life and youth, and almost incorporeal; my heart can feel no foreboding where she is concerned. Heaven, which knows our feelings for her, will doubtless preserve her for us. Dear, we shall not lose her; I seem to have an inward sense that that is certain. I sincerely hope that, when you receive this letter, your anxiety will have disappeared. Tell her from me of all the real and tender interest I take in her; tell her that to me her memory is one of the most beautiful things in this world. Keep your promise and do not fail to let me have news of her as often as possible. Alas, what a long time will elapse before I receive a reply to this letter! How cruel a thing is distance! What makes you speak of your return to France? You are trying to humour me, you are deceiving me. Amid all my troubles there arises one sweet thought, that of your friendship, the thought that I exist in your memory in the shape in which it has pleased God to fashion me. Dear, I see no other safe shelter for me upon earth but your heart; I am a stranger and unknown to all the rest. Adieu, my poor brother. Shall I see you again? This idea does not present itself to my mind very distinctly. If you see me again, I fear you will find me quite out of my senses. Adieu, you to whom I owe so much! Adieu, unmixed felicity! O memories of my happy days, can you not now lighten a little my sad hours?

"I am not one of those who exhaust all their sorrow at the moment of separation; each day adds to the grief which I feel at your absence and, if you were to stay in Rome a hundred years, you would not come to the end of that grief. In order to delude myself as to absence, not a day passes but I read some pages of your work: I make every effort to imagine that I hear you speak. My love for you is very natural: ever since our childhood you have been my protector and my friend; you have never cost me a tear, never made a friend but he has become mine. My kind brother, Heaven, which is pleased to make sport of all my other felicities, wills that I should find my happiness wholly in you, that I should trust myself to your heart. Give me news soon of Madame de Beaumont. Address your letters to me at Mademoiselle Lamotte's, although I do not know how long I shall be able to remain there. Since our last separation, I have always, where my house is concerned, been like a quicksand that gives way beneath my feet: assuredly to anyone who does not know me I must appear incomprehensible; nevertheless I vary only in form, for inwardly I remain constantly the same."

The song of the swan preparing to die was conveyed by me to the dying swan: I was the echo of that last ineffable music!

And Madame de Krüdener.

Another letter, very different from the above, but written by a woman who has played an extraordinary part, Madame de Krüdener [560], shows the empire which Madame de Beaumont, with no strength of beauty, fame, power, or wealth, exercised over people's minds:

"Paris, 24 November 1803.

"I learnt two days ago from M. Michaud [561], who has returned from Lyons, that Madame de Beaumont was in Rome and that she was very, very ill: that is what he told me. I was deeply grieved by this; I had a nervous shock, and I thought a great deal of this charming woman, whom I had not known long, but whom I loved truly. How often have I wished for her happiness! How often have I hoped that she might cross the Alps and find beneath the sky of Italy the sweet and profound emotions which I myself have there experienced! Alas, can she have reached that delightful country only to know pain and to be exposed to dangers which I dread! I cannot tell you how this idea grieves me. Forgive me if I have been so much absorbed by this that I have not yet spoken to you of yourself, my dear Chateaubriand; you must know my sincere attachment for you, and to show you the genuine interest which I take in Madame de Beaumont is to touch you more than I should have done by writing of yourself. I have that sad spectacle before my eyes; I have the secret of sorrow, and my soul is always torn at the sight of those souls to which nature gives the power of suffering more than others. I had hoped that Madame de Beaumont would enjoy the privilege which she had received, of being happier; I had hoped that she would recover some little health with the sun of Italy and the happiness of having you by her side. Ah, reassure me, speak to me; tell her that I love her sincerely, that I pray for her! Has she had my letter written in reply to hers to Clermont? Address your answer to Michaud: I ask you only for one word, for I know, my dear Chateaubriand, how sensitive you are, and how you suffer. I thought she was better; I did not write to her; I was overwhelmed with business; but I thought of the happiness she would find in seeing you again, and I imagined how it would be. Tell me something of your own health; believe in my friendship, in the interest which I have vowed to you for ever, and do not forget me.

"B. Krüdener."

The improvement which the air of Rome had produced in Madame de Beaumont did not last: true, the indications of an immediate dissolution disappeared; but it seems that the last moment always lingers as it were to deceive us. Two or three times, I had tried the effect of a drive with the patient; I strove to divert her thoughts by pointing out the country and the sky to her: she no longer cared for anything. One day I took her to the Coliseum: it was one of those October days that are to be seen only in Rome. She contrived to alight, and went and sat upon a stone facing one of the altars placed in the circle. She raised her eyes and turned them slowly around those porticoes which had themselves so many years been dead, and which had seen so many die; the ruins were adorned with briers and columbines saffroned by autumn and bathed in light. The dying woman next lowered her eyes, which had left the sun, stage by stage, till they came to the arena; she fixed them upon the altar cross, and said:

"Let us go; I am cold."

I took her home again; she went to bed and rose no more. I was in correspondence with the Comte de La Luzerne [562]; I sent him from Rome, by each mail, the bulletin of his sister-in-law's health. He had taken my brother with him when Louis XVI. charged him with a diplomatic mission to London: André Chénier was a member of this embassy.

The doctors, whom I called together again after the experiment of the drive, declared to me that nothing but a miracle could save Madame de Beaumont. She was impressed with the idea that she would not outlive All Souls' Day, the 2nd of November; then she remembered that one of her kinsmen, I do not know which, had died on the 4th of November. I told her that her imagination was troubled; that she would come to see the falsity of her alarms; she replied, to console me:

"Ah, yes, I shall go farther!"

She noticed a few tears which I was trying to conceal from her; she held out her hand to me, and said:

"You are a child; were you not prepared for it?"

On the eve of her death, Thursday the 3rd of November, she seemed more composed. She spoke to me of the disposal of her property, and said, speaking of her will, "that all was settled, but that all had to be done, and that she would have liked to have had only two hours in which to see to it."

In the evening, the doctor told me that he felt obliged to warn the sufferer that the time had come for her to think of setting her conscience in order: I broke down for a minute; I was staggered by the fear of hastening the few moments which Madame de Beaumont had still to live by the formal preparations for death. I railed at the doctor, and then entreated him to wait at least till the next day.

I passed a cruel night, with this secret locked in my bosom. The patient did not permit me to spend it in her room. I remained outside, trembling at every sound I heard: when the door was half opened, I perceived the feeble gleam of an expiring night-light.

The last scene.

On Friday the 4th of November, I entered, followed by the doctor. Madame de Beaumont observed my agitation, and said:

"Why do you look like that? I have had a good night."

The doctor thereupon intentionally told me aloud that he wished to speak to me in the next room. I went out: when I returned, I no longer knew if I lived. Madame de Beaumont asked me what the doctor wanted. I flung myself at her bedside and burst into tears. She lay for a moment without speaking, looked at me, and said in a firm voice, as though she wished to give me strength:

"I did not think that it was quite so near; well, the time has come to say good-bye. Send for the Abbé de Bonnevie."

The Abbé de Bonnevie, having obtained powers, went to Madame de Beaumont. She told him that she had always had a deep religious feeling at heart, but that the extraordinary misfortunes which had befallen her during the Revolution had led her for some time to doubt the justice of Providence; that she was ready to admit her errors and to recommend herself to the eternal mercy; that she hoped, however, that the ills which she had suffered in this world would shorten her time of expiation in the next. She made a sign to me to withdraw, and remained alone with her confessor.

I saw him come back an hour later, wiping his eyes, and saying that he had never heard more beautiful language, nor seen such heroism. The parish priest was sent for to administer the sacraments. I returned to Madame de Beaumont. When she saw me, she asked:

"Well, are you pleased with me?"

She spoke feelingly of what she deigned to call "my kindness" to her: ah, if I had at that moment been able to buy back a single one of her days by the sacrifice of all my own, how gladly would I have done so! Madame de Beaumont's other friends, who were not present at this sight, had at all events but once to weep for her: whereas I stood at the head of the bed of pain in which man hears his last hour strike, and each smile of the patient restored me to life and made me lose it again as it died away. One lamentable thought distracted me: I noticed that Madame de Beaumont had not until her last breath suspected the real attachment which I bore for her; she did not cease to show her surprise, and she seemed to die disconsolate and charmed. She had believed herself a burden to me, and had wished to go to set me free.

The priest arrived at eleven o'clock: the room filled with that indifferent crowd of idlers which cannot be prevented from running after the priest in Rome. Madame de Beaumont faced the formidable solemnity without the least sign of fear. We fell upon our knees, and the patient received Communion and Extreme Unction at once. When all had retired, she made me sit on the edge of her bed and spoke to me for half an hour of my affairs and of my plans with the greatest elevation of mind and the most touching friendship; she urged me, above all, to live with Madame de Chateaubriand and M. Joubert: but was M. Joubert himself to live?

She asked me to open the window, as she felt oppressed. A sun-ray came and lit up her bed: this seemed to cheer her. She then reminded me of plans for retiring to the country which we had sometimes discussed, and she began to cry.

Between two and three in the afternoon, Madame de Beaumont asked to be changed to another bed by Madame Saint-Germain [563], an old Spanish lady's-maid, who waited on her with the affection worthy of so kind a mistress: the doctor forbade this, fearing lest Madame de Beaumont might die during the moving. She then told me that she felt the agony approach. Suddenly she flung back her blanket, held out her hand to me, pressed mine convulsively; her eyes wandered. With her one free hand she made signs to some one whom she saw standing at the foot of her bed; then, bringing the hand back to her breast, she said:

"It is there!"

Death of madame de Beaumont.

Dismayed, I asked her if she knew me: a faint smile broke through her delirium; she gave me a little nod of the head: her speech already was no longer of this world. The convulsions lasted only a few minutes. We supported her in our arms, the doctor, the nurse, and myself: one of my hands lay upon her heart, which could be felt against her wasted frame; it beat swiftly, like a clock winding off its broken chain. Oh, moment of fear and horror, I felt it stop! We let down upon her pillow the woman who had found rest; her head drooped. Some locks of her uncurled hair fell over her forehead; her eyes were closed, night had set in for ever. The doctor held a mirror and a light to the stranger's mouth: the mirror was not dimmed with the breath of life and the light remained unmoved. All was ended.

Generally those who weep are able to indulge their tears in peace; there are others to take upon themselves to attend to the last cares of religion: as representing for France the Cardinal Minister, then absent, and as the sole friend of M. de Montmorin's daughter and responsible to her family, I was obliged to superintend everything; I had to fix the place of burial, to look after the depth and width of the grave, to order the winding-sheet and to give the carpenter the dimensions of the coffin.

Two monks watched by the coffin, which was to be carried to San Luigi dei Francesi. One of these fathers was from Auvergne and a native of Montmorin itself. Madame de Beaumont had expressed the wish to be buried in a piece of cloth which her brother Auguste [564], the only one to escape the scaffold, had sent her from the Mauritius. This cloth was not in Rome; only a piece of it was found, which she always carried with her. Madame Saint-Germain fastened this strip around the body with a cornelian containing some of M. de Montmorin's hair. The French ecclesiastics were invited; the Princesse Borghèse lent the funeral car of her family; Cardinal Fesch had left orders, in case of an accident but too clearly foreseen, to send his livery and his carriages. On Saturday the 5th of November, at seven o'clock in the evening, by the gleam of torch-light and amidst a large crowd, Madame de Beaumont passed along the road where we have all to pass. On Sunday the 6th of November, the burial mass was celebrated. The funeral would have been less French in Paris than it was in Rome. That religious architecture which displays in its ornaments the arms and inscriptions of our ancient country; those tombs on which are inscribed the names of some of the most historic families of our annals; that church, under the protection of a great saint, a great king and a great man: all this did not console misfortune, but honoured it. I had wished that the last scion of a once exalted race should at least find some support in my humble attachment, and that friendship should not fail it as fortune had done.

The people of Rome, accustomed to strangers, accept them as brothers and sisters. Madame de Beaumont left a pious memory behind her on that soil so hospitable to the dead; she is still remembered: I have seen Leo XII.[565] pray at her tomb [566]. In 1828 [567], I visited the monument of her who was the soul of a vanishing society; the sound of my footsteps around this silent monument, in a lonely church, was a warning to me:

"I shall always love thee," says the Greek epitaph; "but thou, among the dead, drink not, I pray thee, of the cup which would cause thee to forget thy former friends [568]."

If the calamities of a private life were to be measured by the scale of public events, those calamities would hardly deserve a word in a writer's Memoirs. Who has not lost a friend? Who has not seen him die? Who could not recall a similar scene of mourning? The comment is just, yet no one has ever corrected himself of telling his own adventures: sailors on board the ship that carries them have a family on shore of whom they think and of whom they talk with one another. Every man has within himself a world apart, foreign to the laws and to the general destinies of the ages. It is, moreover, a mistake to believe that revolutions, famous accidents, resounding catastrophes are the only records of our nature: we all labour singly at the chain of our common history, and all these separate existences together compose man's universe in the eyes of God.

Letters of sympathy.

To collect regrets around the ashes of Madame de Beaumont is but to lay upon her tomb the wreaths intended for her:

M. de Chênedollé to Chateaubriand.

"You can have no doubt, my dear', unhappy friend, of the great part which I take in your affliction. My grief is not so great as yours, because that is impossible; but I am very deeply afflicted by this loss, which darkens yet further this existence which for so long has been nothing but suffering to me. It is thus that all that is good, lovable and sensitive vanishes from the face of the earth. My poor friend, hasten back to France; come and seek consolation with your old friend. You know how well I love you: come.

"I was excessively anxious about you: it was more than three months since I had heard from you, and three of my letters have remained unanswered. Have you received them? Madame de Caud suddenly ceased writing to me two months ago. This hurt me mortally, and yet I cannot think that I have done anything to offend her. But, whatever she may do, she can never take from me the fond and respectful friendship which I have vowed to her for life. Fontanes and Joubert also no longer write to me; so that all whom I loved seem to have combined to forget me at once. Do not you forget me, O my good friend: leave me one heart upon which I can rely in this vale of tears! Farewell, I embrace you weeping. Be sure, my good friend, that I feel your loss as it should be felt.

"23 November 1803."

M. de Fontanes to Chateaubriand.

"I share all your regrets, my dear friend: I feel the painfulness of your position. To die so young, and after outliving all her family! But, at any rate, that interesting and unhappy woman did not lack the help and the remembrance of friendship. Her memory will live in hearts worthy of her. I have forwarded to M. de La Luzerne the touching account intended for him. Old Saint-Germain, your friend's servant, has taken it with him. That faithful attendant made me shed tears when talking of his mistress. I told him that he had a legacy of ten thousand francs; but he did not give it a single thought. If it were possible to talk of money matters under such mournful circumstances, I would say that it would have been very natural to have given you at least the use of a fortune which will have to pass to distant and almost unknown collaterals [569]. I approve of your conduct; I know your delicacy; but I cannot be as disinterested for my friend as he is for himself. I confess that this omission surprises and pains me [570]. Madame de Beaumont spoke to you on her death-bed, with the eloquence of a last farewell, of the future and of your destinies. Her voice must needs have greater strength than mine. But did she advise you to throw up a salary of eight or ten thousand francs just when your path was cleared of its first thorns? Could you rashly, my dear friend, take so momentous a step? You know what a pleasure it would be to me to see you again. Were I only to consult my own happiness, I would say, 'Come at once.' But your interests are as dear to me as my own, and I see no immediate prospects for you which could make good the advantages which you are voluntarily surrendering. I know that your talents, your name and your industry will never leave you in want of the first necessities; but in all that I see more fame than fortune. Your education, your habits, demand some little expenditure. Reputation alone will not provide the wants of life, and the wretched science of 'bread and cheese' takes precedence of all others, if you want to be independent and at ease. I trust that nothing will persuade you to seek your fortune among foreigners. Believe me, my friend, after the first blandishments, they are worth even less than one's fellow-countrymen. If your loving friend made all these reflections, her last moments must have been somewhat disturbed; but I hope that, at the foot of her grave, you will find lessons and lights superior to any which your remaining friends could give you. That amiable woman loved you: she will advise you well. Her memory and your heart will be a safe guide to you: I have no more concern if you listen to them both. Adieu, my dear friend, I embrace you tenderly."

M. Necker wrote me the only letter which I ever received from him. I had witnessed the delight of the Court at the dismissal of this minister, the disregard of whose honest warnings contributed to the overthrow of the monarchy. He had been M. de Montmorin's colleague. M. Necker was shortly to die at the place whence his letter was dated; not at that time having Madame de Staël by his side, he found some tears for his daughter's friend:

M. Necker, Madame de Staël.

M. Necker to Chateaubriand.

"Sir,

"My daughter, when setting out for Germany, asked me to open any packets of large size that might be addressed to her, so as to decide whether they were worth the trouble of forwarding by post. This is the reason of my learning the news of Madame de Beaumont's death before she does. I forwarded your letter to her, sir, at Frankfort, whence it will probably be sent on farther to her, perhaps to Weimar or Berlin. Do not, therefore, be surprised, sir, if you do not receive a reply from Madame de Staël as early as you have the right to expect. You must be assured, sir, of the grief which Madame de Staël will feel on hearing of the loss of a friend of whom I have always heard her speak with profound feeling. I join in her sorrow, I join, sir, in yours, and I have my own particular share when I think of the unhappy fate of the whole family of my friend M. de Montmorin.

"I see, sir, that you are on the point of leaving Rome to return to France: I hope you will choose your road through Geneva, where I shall spend the winter. I should be very eager to do you the honours of a town where you are already known by reputation. But where, sir, are you not so known? Your last work, sparkling with incomparable beauties, is in the hands of all who love to read.

"I have the honour, sir, to offer you the assurance and the homage of my most distinguished sentiments.

"Necker.

"Coppet, 27 November 1803."

Madame de Staël to Chateaubriand.

"Frankfort, 3 December 1803.

"Ah, Heavens, my dear Francis [571] with what sorrow was I smitten on receiving your letter! Already, yesterday, this frightful news was burst upon me through the papers, and now comes your heart-rending narrative to engrave it for ever in letters of blood on my heart. Can you, can you speak to me of different opinions on religion, on the priests? Are there two opinions where there is but one sentiment? I have read your account through the most sorrowful tears. My dear Francis, think of the time at which you felt the greatest friendship for me; above all, do not forget that at which my whole heart was drawn towards you, and tell yourself that those feelings, more tender, more profound than ever, remain for you at the bottom of my soul. I loved, I admired the character of Madame de Beaumont: I knew not one more generous, more grateful, more passionately sensitive. Since I first entered into the world, I never ceased to have relations with her, and I always felt, even in the midst of some differences, that we held together by the same roots. My dear Francis, give me a place in your heart. I admire you, I love you, I loved her whom you regret. I am a devoted friend, I will be a sister to you. I must respect your opinions more than ever. Matthieu [572], who holds them, has been an angel to me in this last sorrow which I have felt. Give me a new reason for showing them my consideration: let me be useful or agreeable to you in some way. Did you hear that I had been banished to a distance of forty leagues from Paris [573]? I have taken the occasion to go round Germany; but in the spring I shall have returned to Paris itself, if my exile be ended, or near Paris, or to Geneva. Arrange that, in some manner, we may meet. Do you not feel that my mind and my soul understand yours, and do you not feel wherein we resemble each other, notwithstanding the differences? M. de Humboldt [574] wrote me a letter a few days ago in which he spoke to me of your work with an admiration which must flatter you in a man of his merit and opinions. But why speak to you of your successes at such a moment? Yet she loved those successes of yours, and attached her own fame to them. Farewell, my dear François. I will write to you from Weimar, in Saxony. Write to me there, to the care of Messrs. Desport, bankers. What harrowing phrases your story contains! And then your resolve to keep poor Saint-Germain: you must bring her to my house one day.

"Farewell, affectionately: and sorrowfully, farewell.

"M. de Staël."

This eager and affectionately informal letter, written by an illustrious woman, redoubled my emotion. Madame de Beaumont would have been very happy at that moment had Heaven permitted her to return to life! But our attachments, which are perceived by the dead, cannot free them from their bonds: when Lazarus rose from the tomb he was bound feet and hands with winding-bands, and his face was bound about with a napkin; but friendship cannot say, as Christ said to Martha and Mary:

"Loose him and let him go [575]."

My consolers have also passed away, and they claim for themselves the regrets which they gave to another.

My grief.

I had determined to leave this official career in which personal misfortunes had come in addition to the triviality of the work and to paltry political annoyances. One does not know what desolation of the heart means until one has remained alone, wandering through spots once inhabited by a person who accepted your life: you seek her and do not find her; she speaks to you, smiles to you, accompanies you; all that she has worn or touched presents her image; between her and you there is only a transparent curtain, but so heavy that you cannot raise it. The remembrance of the first friend who has left you on the road is a cruel one; for if your days have been prolonged, you have necessarily suffered other losses: the dead who have followed each other become linked to the first, and you mourn at one time and in one person all those whom you have successively lost.

At this distance from France, the arrangements which I was making progressed slowly; meanwhile I remained forlorn among the ruins of Rome. When I first walked out, the aspect of things seemed changed to me: I did not recognise the trees, nor the monuments, nor the sky; I wandered through the fields, along the cascades and aqueducts, as I had done before beneath the overhanging forests of the New World. Then I re-entered the Eternal City, which now added one more extinguished life to so many spent existences. By dint of my many rambles in the solitudes of the Tiber, they became so clearly engraved upon my memory that I was able to describe them fairly accurately in my Letter to M. de Fontanes [576]:

"If the traveller be unhappy," I said, "if he have mingled the ashes that he loved with so many ashes of the illustrious, what a charm will he not find in passing from the tomb of Cæcilia Metella to the grave of an ill-fortuned woman!"

It was also in Rome that I first formed the idea of writing the Memoirs of my Life; I find a few lines jotted down at random, from which I decipher these few words:

"After wandering over the world, spending the best years of my youth far from my native land, and suffering nearly all that man can suffer, not excluding hunger, I returned to Paris in 1800."

In a letter to M. Joubert [577] I thus sketched my plan:

"My only pleasure is to snatch a few hours wherein to busy myself with a work which alone can bring some assuagement to my grief: it is the Memoirs of my Life. Rome will have a place in it; it is in this way only that I can henceforth speak of Rome. Have no fear; there will be no confessions likely to give pain to my friends: if I am to count for anything in the future, my friends' names will therein appear glorified and respected. Nor shall I entertain posterity with the details of my frailties; I shall say of myself only what becomes my dignity as a man, and, I dare say it, the elevation of my heart. One should show to the world only what is beautiful; it is no lie against God to unveil of one's life no more than may lead our fellows towards noble and generous feelings. Not that, in truth, I have anything to conceal: I have not caused the dismissal of a servant-girl for a stolen ribbon, nor left my friend to die in the street, nor dishonoured the woman who sheltered me, nor taken my bastards to the Foundling Hospital [578]; but I have had my moments of weakness, of faint-heartedness: one sigh over myself will be sufficient to make others understand those common miseries, meant to be left behind the veil. What would society gain by the reproduction of sores that occur on every side? There is no lack of examples, where it is a question of triumphing over our poor human nature."

I decide to write my memoirs.

In this plan which I made for myself I omitted my family, my childhood, my youth, my travels, and my exile: yet these are the recitals in which I took most pleasure.

I had been like a happy slave: accustomed to apply his liberty to the vine-stocks, he no longer knows what to do with his leisure when his chains are broken. Whenever I decided to set to work, a figure came and placed itself before me, and I could not take my eyes from it: religion alone held me by its gravity and by the reflections of a higher order which it suggested to me.

And yet, while occupied with the thought of writing my Memoirs, I felt the price which the ancients attached to the value of their name: there is perhaps a touching reality in this perpetuity of the memories which one may leave on the way. Perhaps, among the great men of antiquity, this idea of an immortal life among the human race supplied the place of the immortality of the soul which for them remained a problem. If fame is but a small thing when it relates to ourselves, it must nevertheless be agreed that to give an imperishable existence to all that it has loved is one of the finest privileges attached to the friendship of genius.

I undertook a commentary upon certain books of the Bible, beginning with Genesis. Upon the verse, "Behold, Adam is become as one of us, knowing good and evil: now, therefore, lest perhaps he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever [579]," I remarked the tremendous irony of the Creator: "Behold Adam is become as one of us, etc. Lest perhaps the man put forth his hand and take of the tree of life." Why? Because he has tasted of the fruit of knowledge, and knows good and evil, he is now loaded with ills: "therefore, lest perhaps he live for ever." What a blessing from God is death!

There are prayers begun, some for "disquietude of soul," others "to strengthen one's self against the prosperity of the wicked." I sought to bring back to a centre of repose the thoughts which strayed beyond me.

As God was not pleased to let my life end there, reserving it for prolonged trials, the storms which had arisen abated. Suddenly the Cardinal Ambassador changed his manner towards me; I had an explanation with him, and declared my resolve to resign. He opposed this: he maintained that my resignation at that moment would have the appearance of a disgrace; that I should be delighting my enemies, that the First Consul would take offense, which would prevent me from remaining undisturbed in the places to which I proposed to retire. He suggested that I should go to spend a fortnight or a month at Naples.

Just at this moment, I was being sounded on behalf of Russia with a view to my accepting the place of governor to a grand-duke: it was as much as I would have done had I proposed to sacrifice to Henry V. the last years of my life.

While wavering between a thousand resolutions, I received the news that the First Consul had appointed me Minister to the Valais. He had at first flown into a passion on the faith of some denunciations; but, returning to his senses, he understood that I was of the race which is of value only in the front rank, that I should not be mixed with others, as otherwise I could never be used to advantage. There was no place vacant: he created one, and, choosing it in conformity with my instinct for solitude and independence, he placed me in the Alps; he gave me a Catholic republic, in a world of torrents: the Rhone and our soldiers would cross at my feet, the one descending towards France, the others climbing towards Italy, while the Simplon opened its daring road before me. The Consul was to allow me as frequent leave as I might wish to travel in Italy, and Madame Bacciochi sent me a message through Fontanes that the first important embassy available was reserved for me. I thus won this first diplomatic victory without either expecting or intending it; true that, at the head of the State, was a lofty intelligence, which was not willing to sacrifice to official intrigues another intelligence which it knew to be but too well disposed to secede from the government.

Cardinal Fesch.

This remark is all the more true in that Cardinal Fesch, to whom I do justice in these Memoirs in a manner upon which, perhaps, he did not reckon, had sent two malicious dispatches to Paris, almost at the very moment at which his manners had become more obliging, after the death of Madame de Beaumont. Did his true thought lie in his conversations, when he gave me leave to go to Naples, or in his diplomatic missives? The conversations and the missives bear the same date and are contradictory. It would have been easy for me to set M. le Cardinal, right with himself by destroying all traces of the reports that concerned me: I had but to remove the Ambassador's lucubrations from the cartons at the time when I was Minister for Foreign Affairs; I should have done only what M. de Talleyrand did in the matter of his correspondence with the Emperor. I did not consider that I had the right to turn my power to my own advantage. If, by chance, any one should look up these documents, he would find them in their place. That this conduct is self-deceiving I readily admit; but, in order not to make a merit of a virtue which I do not possess, I must say that this respect for the correspondence of my detractors arises more from my contempt than from my generosity. I have also seen, in the archives of the Berlin Embassy, offensive letters from M. le Marquis de Bonnay concerning myself: far from considering my own feelings, I shall make them public.

M. le Cardinal Fesch was no more reticent as to the poor Abbé Guillon (the Bishop of Morocco): the latter was marked out as "a Russian agent." Bonaparte called M. Lainé [580] "an English agent:" these are instances of the gossip of which that great man had taken the bad habit from the police reports. But was there nothing to be said against M. Fesch himself? The Cardinal de Clermont-Tonnerre was at Rome like myself, in 1803: what did he not write of Napoleon's uncle! I have the letters.

For the rest, to whom do these contentions, buried since forty years in worm-eaten files, matter? Of the several actors of that period, one alone will remain: Bonaparte. All of us who make pretensions to live are dead already: can the insect's name be read by the feeble light which it sometimes drags with it as it crawls?

When M. le Cardinal Fesch met me again I was Ambassador to Leo XII.; he gave me marks of his esteem: I on my side made a point of outdoing him in deference. It is natural, moreover, that I should have been judged with a severity which I have never spared myself. All this is past and done with: I do not wish even to recognise the handwriting of those who, in 1803, served as official or semi-official secretaries to M. le Cardinal Fesch.

I set out for Naples: there began a year without Madame de Beaumont, a year of absence to be followed by so many others! I have never seen Naples again since that time, although I was on the threshold of that same town in 1828, having promised myself to go there with Madame de Chateaubriand. The orange-trees were covered with their fruits, the myrtles with their flowers. Baie, the Campi Elysei, and the sea were delights of which I no longer had any one to whom to speak. I have described the Bay of Naples in the Martyrs.[581] I climbed Vesuvius and descended into its crater. I pilfered from myself: I was enacting a scene in René.

At Pompeii I was shown a skeleton in irons, and mutilated Latin words scribbled by soldiers on the walls. I returned to Rome. Canova [582] permitted me to visit his studio while he was working at the statue of a nymph. Elsewhere the models for the marbles of the tomb which I had ordered had already attained much expression. I went to pray over ashes at San Luigi, and I left for Paris on the 21st of January 1804, another day of misfortune.

Behold a prodigious misery: five and thirty years have sped since the date of those events. Did not I flatter myself, in those distant days of grief, that the bond just broken would be my last? And yet how soon have I, not forgotten, but replaced what was dear to me! Thus man goes from weakness to weakness. When he is young and drives his life before him, a shadow of an excuse remains to him; but when he gets between the shafts and laboriously drags it behind him, how is he to be excused? The poverty of our nature is so intense that in our volatile infirmities, in order to express our new affections, we can employ only words which we have already worn threadbare in our former attachments. There are words, nevertheless, which ought to be used but once: they become profaned by repetition. Our betrayed and neglected friendships reproach us with the new companionships that we have formed; our hours arraign one another: our life is one perpetual blush, because it is one continued fault.

As my intention was not to remain in Paris, I alighted at the Hôtel de France [583], in the Rue de Beaune, where Madame de Chateaubriand came to join me to accompany me to the Valais. My former society, already half dispersed, had lost the link which held it together.

Bonaparte was marching towards the Empire; his genius rose in the measure that events increased in importance: he was able, like gunpowder when it expands, to carry away the world; already immense, and yet not feeling himself at his zenith, he was tormented by his strength; he groped, he seemed to be feeling his way; when I arrived in Paris he was dealing with Pichegru and Moreau; through petty envy he had consented to admit them as rivals: Moreau, Pichegru, and Georges Cadoudal, who was greatly their superior, were arrested.

This vulgar train of conspiracies, which we encounter in all the affairs of life, was very distasteful to me, and I was glad to seek flight in the mountains.

The council of the town of Sion wrote to me. The simplicity of this despatch has made a document of it to me; I was entering politics through religion: the Génie du Christianisme had opened the doors for me.

I am promoted.

"REPUBLIC OF THE VALAIS.

"Sion, 20 February 1804.

"Council of the Town of Sion.

"To Monsieur Chateaubriand, Secretary of Legation of the French Republic in Rome.

"Sir,

"An official letter from our High Bailiff apprizes us of your nomination to the post of French Minister to our Republic. We hasten to express to you the very complete satisfaction which this choice gives us. We see in this nomination a precious token of the good-will of the First Consul towards our Republic, and we congratulate ourselves on the honour of having you within our walls: we draw from it the happiest auguries for the welfare of our country and of our town. In order to give you a proof of these sentiments, we have resolved to have a provisional lodging prepared for you, worthy to receive you, fitted with furniture and effects suited for your use, in so far as the locality and our circumstances permit, pending the time when you will yourself have been able to make arrangements to your own convenience.

"Pray, sir, accept this offer as a proof of our sincere inclination to honour the French Government in the person of its envoy, the choice of whom must needs be peculiarly pleasing to a religious people. We beg you to be so good as to acquaint us with the date of your arrival in this town.

"Accept, sir, the assurances of our respectful consideration.

"De Riedmatten,

"President of the Town Council of Sion.

"By order of the Town Council:

"De Torrenté,

"Secretary to the Council."

Two days before the 21st of March [584], I dressed to go to take leave of Bonaparte at the Tuileries; I had not seen him again since the moment during which he had spoken to me at Lucien's. The gallery in which he was receiving was full; he was accompanied by Murat and a principal aide-de-camp; he passed through almost without stopping. As he approached me, I was struck by the alteration in his face: his cheeks were sunk and livid, his eyes hard, his complexion pale and muddy, his aspect gloomy and terrible. The attraction which had previously urged me towards him ceased; instead of remaining on his passage, I made a movement to avoid him. He threw a glance at me as though to seek to recognise me, took a few steps towards me, then turned and walked away. Had I appeared to him as a warning? His aide-de-camp noticed me: when the crowd covered me, the aide-de-camp tried to catch sight of me between the persons standing before me, and again drew the Consul in my direction. This sport continued for nearly a quarter of an hour, I always drawing back, Napoleon always following me without knowing it. I have never been able to explain to myself what idea had struck the aide-de-camp. Did he take me for a suspicious man whom he had never seen? Did he, if he knew who I was, wish to force Bonaparte to speak to me? However this may be, Napoleon passed on to another apartment. Content to have done my duty in presenting myself at the Tuileries, I withdrew. From the joy which I have always felt at leaving palaces, it is evident that I was not made to enter them.

Bonaparte.

On returning to the Hôtel de France, I said to several of my friends:

"Something strange must be happening, of which we do not know, for Bonaparte cannot have changed to that extent, unless he be ill."

M. de Bourrienne [585] knew of my singular foresight: he has only confused the dates; here is his sentence:

"On returning from the First Consul's, M. de Chateaubriand declared to his friends that he had remarked a great alteration in the First Consul, and something very sinister in his look [586]."

Yes, I remarked it: a superior intelligence does not bring forth evil without pain, because that is not its natural fruit, and it ought not to bear it.

Two days later, on the 21st of March [587], I rose early, for the sake of a memory that was sad and dear to me. M. de Montmorin had built himself a house at the corner of the Rue Plumet, on the new Boulevard des Invalides. In the garden of that house, which was sold during the Revolution, Madame de Beaumont, then almost a child, had planted a cypress-tree, and she had sometimes taken pleasure in showing it to me as we passed: it was to this cypress-tree, of which I alone knew the origin and the history, that I went to bid adieu. It still exists, but it is pining away, and scarce rises to the level of the casement beneath which a hand which has vanished loved to tend it. I distinguish that poor tree from among three or four others of its species; it seems to know me and to rejoice when I approach; mournful breezes bend its yellowed head a little towards me, and it murmurs at the window of the deserted room: a mysterious intelligence reigns between us, which will cease when one or the other shall have fallen.

Having paid my pious tribute, I went down the Boulevard and Esplanade des Invalides, crossed the Pont Louis XV. and the Tuileries Gardens, which I left, near the Pavilion Marsan, by the gate which now opens into the Rue de Rivoli. There, between eleven and twelve o'clock in the morning, I heard a man and a woman crying official news; passers-by were stopping, suddenly petrified by these words:

"Verdict of the special military commission summoned at Vincennes, condemning to pain of death the man known as Louis Antoine Henri de Bourbon, born on the 2nd of August 1772 at Chantilly."

Death of the Duc D'Enghien.

This cry fell upon me like a thunderbolt; it changed my life, as it changed Napoleon's. I returned home; I said to Madame Chateaubriand:

"The Duc d'Enghien has been shot."

I sat down to a table and began to write my resignation [588]. Madame de Chateaubriand raised no objection, and with great courage watched me writing. She did not blind herself to my danger: General Moreau and Georges Cadoudal were being prosecuted [589]; the lion had tasted blood, this was not the moment to irritate him.

M. Clausel de Coussergues [590] arrived in the interval; he also had heard the sentence cried. He found me pen in hand: my letter, from which, out of compassion for Madame de Chateaubriand, he made me suppress certain angry phrases, was despatched; it was addressed to the Minister of Foreign Relations. The wording mattered little: my opinion and my crime lay in the fact of my resignation: Bonaparte made no mistake as to that. Madame Bacciochi exclaimed loudly on hearing of what she called my "disloyalty;" she sent for me and made me the liveliest reproaches. M. de Fontanes at first went almost mad with fear: he already saw me shot, with all the persons who were attached to me. During several days, my friends went in dread of seeing me carried off by the police; they called on me from one minute to the other, always trembling as they approached the porter's lodge. M. Pasquier came and embraced me on the day after my resignation, saying he was happy to have such a friend as I. He remained for a fairly considerable time in an honourably moderate opposition, removed from place and power.

Nevertheless, the movement of sympathy which impels us to praise a generous action came to an end. I had, in consideration of religion, accepted a place outside France, a place conferred upon me by a mighty genius, the conqueror of anarchy, a leader sprung from the popular principle, the consul of a republic, and not a king continuing an usurped monarchy; at that time I stood alone in my feeling, because I was consistent in my conduct; I retired when the conditions to which I was able to subscribe altered; but, so soon as the hero had changed himself into a murderer, there came a rush for his ante-chamber. Six months after the 21st of March, one might have thought that there was only one opinion in society, but for a few malicious jests in which people indulged in private. Fallen persons pretended to have been violated, and only they, it was said, were violated who possessed a great name or great importance, and each one, to prove his importance or his quarterings, contrived to be violated by dint of solicitation.

Those who had most loudly applauded me fell away; my presence was a reproach to them: prudent people find imprudence in those who yield to honour. There are times in which loftiness of soul is a real infirmity; no one understands it; it passes for a sort of narrowness of mind, for a prejudice, an unintelligent trick of education, a crotchet, a whim which interferes with the judgment: an honourable imbecility, perhaps, but a stupid helotism. What capacity can any one find in shutting your eyes, in remaining indifferent to the march of the century, to the movement of ideas, to the change of manners, to the progress of society? Is it not a deplorable mistake to attach to events an importance which they do not possess? Barricaded behind your narrow principles, your mind as limited as your judgment, you are like a man living at the back of a house, looking out only on a little yard, unaware of what happens in the street or of the noise to be heard outside. That is what a little independence reduces you to, an object of pity to the average man: as to the great minds with their affectionate pride and their haughty eyes, oculos sublimes[591], their compassionate disdain forgives you, because they know that "you cannot hear [592]." I therefore shrank back humbly into my literary career, a poor Pindar destined in my first Olympic to praise "the excellence of water," leaving wine to the happy.

I resign my Embassy.

Friendship put fresh heart into M. de Fontanes; Madame Bacciochi placed her kindness between her brother's anger and my resolution; M. de Talleyrand, through indifference or calculation, kept my resignation for several days before speaking of it: when he announced it to Bonaparte the latter had had time to reflect. On receiving from me the only direct sign of blame from an honest man who was not afraid to defy him, he uttered merely these two words:

"Very well."

Later, he said to his sister:

"Were you very much alarmed for your friend?"

Long after, in conversation with M. de Fontanes, he confessed that my resignation was one of the things that had impressed him most M. de Talleyrand had an official letter sent to me in which he gracefully reproached me for depriving his department of my talents and services [593]. I returned the expenses of installation, and all was apparently finished. But, in daring to leave Bonaparte, I had placed myself upon his level, and he was incensed against me with all the strength of his perfidy, as I against him with all that of my loyalty. Till the day of his fall, he held the sword suspended over my head: sometimes he returned to me by a natural leaning and tried to drown me in his fatal prosperity; sometimes I was drawn to him by the admiration with which he inspired me, by the idea that I was assisting at a transformation of society, not at a mere change of dynasty: but antipathetic in so many respects, our respective natures gained the upper hand, and if he would gladly have had me shot, I should have felt no great compunction in killing him.

Death makes a great man or unmakes him; it stops him on the stair which he was about to descend, or on the step which he was about to climb: his is a destiny that has succeeded or failed; in the first case, one is reduced to examine what it has been, in the second to conjecture what it might have become.

If, in doing my duty, I had been prompted by far-seeing views of ambition, I should have deceived myself. Charles X. learnt only at Prague what I had done in 1804: he had but lately been King.

"Chateaubriand," he said to me at the Castle of Hradschin, "had you served Bonaparte?"

"Yes, Sire."

"Did you resign on the death of M. le Duc d'Enghien?"

"Yes, Sire."

Misfortune instructs or restores the memory. I have told you how one day in London, when I had taken shelter with M. de Fontanes in a passage during a storm, M. le Duc de Bourbon came and sought cover under the same refuge: in France, his gallant father and he, who so politely thanked whoever wrote a funeral oration on M. le Duc d'Enghien, did not send me one word of remembrance; they were doubtless unaware of my conduct: true, I never told them of it.

[446] This book was commenced in Paris in 1837, continued and completed in Paris in 1838, and revised in February 1845 and December 1846.—T.

[447] The Château du Marais was built by M. Le Maître, a very rich man, who left it to Madame de La Briche, his niece. It stands in the commune of the Val-Saint-Maurice, canton of Dourdan, Department of Seine-et-Oise, and is now the property of the Dowager Duchesse de Noailles.—B.

[448] Adélaïde Edmée de La Briche, née Prévost, widow of Alexis Janvier de La Live de La Briche, Introducer of Ambassadors and Private Secretary to the Queen.—B.

[449] Louise Joséphine Comtesse de Montesquiou-Fezensac (1764-1832), née de La Live de Jully, sister to Madame de Vintimille.—B.

[450] The Château de Champlâtreux, in the commune of Épinay-Champlâtreux, canton of Luzarches, Department of Seine-et-Oise, was the old seat of the Molé family. It belongs now to M. le Duc de Noailles. The Comte Molé died there, 25 November 1855.—B.

[451] Édouard François Matthieu Molé de Champlâtreux (d. 1794), a President in the Parliament of Paris, guillotined 20 April 1794.—B.

[452] The domain, now in the Department of Eure-et-Loir, presented to Madame de Maintenon by Louis XIV.—T.

[453] Louise Éléonore Mélanie Marquise de Custine (1770-1826), née de Sabran, married in 1787 to Amand Louis Philippe François de Custine, guillotined 4 January 1794.—B.

[454] Margaret Queen of France (1219-1295), daughter of Raymond Berengarius IV. Count of Provence, and married in 1234 to King Louis IX.: a virtuous queen in every way worthy of her spouse.—T.

[455] The Château de Fervacques is near Lisieux in Calvados. Madame de Custine bought it of the Duc de Montmorency-Laval and his sister the Duchesse de Luynes. It is now the property of M. le Comte de Montgomery.—T.

[456] Christina Queen of Sweden (1626-1689) spent some years in France after her abdication in 1654.—T.

[457] Astolphe Louis Léonor Marquis de Custine (1793-1857), author of an excellent book on La Russie en 1839, in 4 volumes (1843), and many other remarkable works that obtained a well-deserved success.—B.

[458] Madame de Custine had been imprisoned at the Carmelites and had escaped execution thanks only to the Revolution of 9 Thermidor.—T.

[459] "The lady of Fervacques
Deserves a brisk attack."—T.

[460] Afterwards Madame de Bérenger.—B.

[461] Louise Julie Talma (d. 1805), née Carreau, married Talma on the 19th of April 1791. They were divorced on the 6th of February 1801 by mutual consent. Talma married next year (16 June 1802) Charlotte Vanhove, the divorced wife of Louis Sébastien Olympe Petit, from whom he was also separated shortly afterwards on the same terms.—B.

[462] Stanislas Marie Adélaïde Comte de Clermont-Tonnerre (1747-1792), a Monarchical member of the Constituent Assembly, butchered by the populace on the 10th of August 1792.—T.

[463] Louis Justin Marie Marquis de Talaru (1769-1850), for some time French Ambassador in Madrid under the Restoration. He was created a peer of France on the same day as Chateaubriand (17 August 1815).—B.

[464] Louis Claude de Saint-Martin (1743-1803), known as the Unknown Philosopher, the exponent of "pure spiritualism." His principal works are Des Erreurs et de la vérité (1775), the Homme de désir (1790), and the Ministère de l'Homme-Esprit (1802).—T.

[465] Jean Jacques Comte Lenoir-Laroche (1749-1825) held office for a few days in 1797, was a Conservative member of the Senate (1799-1814), was made a count by Napoleon, and a peer of France by Louis XVIII. (4 June 1814). On the 31st of August 1817, this dignity was declared hereditary in his family.—B.

[466] The Abbé Joseph Faria (circa 1755-1819), a native of Goa, and a famous magnetizer. He plays an important part in Monte Cristo, in which Dumas makes him die at the Château d'If. He died, in fact, in Paris.—B.

[467] Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828), a German doctor (naturalized a Frenchman in 1819) who invented the science of craniology, now known as phrenology.—T.

[468] Mon portrait historique et philosophique, M. de Saint-Martin's posthumous work, printed in a very much mutilated and incomplete form.—B.

[469] The Polytechnic School was installed at the time at the Palais-Bourbon, and removed to the building of the former Collège de Navarre in 1804.—B.

[470] Henri François Marquis de Saint-Lambert (1717-1803), author of a poem, the Saisons, which secured his admission to the French Academy (1770), and of several philosophical works of a pronounced materialistic tendency.—T.

[471] Élisabeth Françoise Sophie Comtesse de Houdetot (1730-1813), née de La Live de Bellegarde. She married Lieutenant-General the Comte de Houdetot in 1748. She was the author of a few Pensées, but owes her reputation rather to the lively passion with which she inspired Rousseau and to her liaison with Saint-Lambert, which lasted nearly half a century.—T.

[472] "Woe be unto him to whom Heaven grants long days!" —T.

[473] "And love consoles me still!
But nought will e'er console me for love's loss." —T.

[474] Friedrich Melchior Baron Grimm (1723-1807), the friend of Rousseau and Diderot, created a baron by the Duke of Saxe-Gotha, whom he represented at the French Court from 1776-1790. In 1795 the Empress Catherine II. made him her minister in Lower Saxony. His diverting correspondence with both potentates was published in 1812-1813.—T.

[475] Pierre Simon Ballanche (1778-1847) started life as a printer at Lyons, where he published the second and third editions of the Génie du Christianisme. He began to devote himself to literature in 1813, wrote several notable works of Christian philosophy, and became elected a member of the French Academy in 1844.—T.

[476] The article on the Législation primitive appeared in the Mercure of the 18 Nivôse Year XI. (8 January 1803).—B.

[477] The Celestines were suppressed in 1778. They were founded in 1244 by Pietro di Murrhone, the hermit Pope, who was elected to the Holy See in 1294, when nearly eighty years of age, and assumed the title of Celestine V. He was canonized in 1313.—T.

[478] René I. Duke of Anjou, titular King of Naples (1408-1480), known as Good King René, and father of Margaret of Anjou, wife of Henry VI. of England.—T.

[479] I omit two or three pages devoted mainly to quotations from Petrarch.—T.

[480] A terrible revolutionary massacre took place at Avignon in 1791.—T.

[481] Petrarch immortalized the source of the Sorgue, which rises near Vaucluse, and is known as the Fountain of Vaucluse.—T.

[482] Alain Chartier (1386-1458), the "Father of French Eloquence," an early French poet, and Secretary to the Household to King Charles VI. Margaret kissed him on the mouth, as he lay sleeping, to show the value she set upon the mouth from which so many fair speeches had issued.—T.

[483] Margaret of Scotland (1418-1445), daughter of James I. King of Scots, was married to the Dauphin, later King Louis XI. of France, as a child, in 1428, but was not united to him until 1436. He made her very unhappy.—T.

[484] Pro. L. Flacco, xxvi. 36.—T.

[485] Job xxxviii. II.—T.

[486] Pytheas (circa 350 B.C.), the famous Greek navigator, was a native of Massilia or Marseilles.—T.

[487] Jean Sire de Joinville (circa 1223—circa 1319) accompanied St. Louis on the Seventh Crusade (1248), which took Cyprus in its course.—T.

[488] Berengarius I. and II., Kings of Italy and Marquises of Ivrea in the tenth century.—T.

[489] Louis II., Duke of Anjou and titular King of Naples (1377-1417), father of Good King René.—T.

[490] Jean Louis de Nogaret de La Valette, Duc d'Épernon (1554-1642), one of the favourites of Henry III., was the head of a Languedoc family and governor of Provence, of which Marseilles was one of the chief cities.—T.

[491] Henri François Xavier de Belsunce de Castel Moron, Bishop of Marseilles (1671-1755), distinguished himself by his courage and zeal during the plague which ravaged the city in the years 1720 and 1721, and by his vigorous opposition to the Jansenistic doctrines.—T.

[492] Vittorio Conte Alfieri (1749-1803), the Italian tragic poet, secretly married in 1788 to the Countess of Albany, widow of Prince Charles Edward Stuart. His Memoirs were published in 1804.—T.

[493] Alfieri, Memoirs, chap. IV.—T.

[494] The Roman amphitheatre or bull-arena at Nîmes was laid in ruins by the English during their occupation in 1417.—T.

[495] The famous Roman remains, in the Corinthian style.—T.

[496] Jean Reboul (1796-1864), the baker-poet, author of Poésies (1836), the Dernier Jour (1839), the Martyre de Vivia, a mystery play, performed at the Odéon (1850), and the Traditionnelles (1857). He continued his trade throughout. In 1848 he was sent to the Constituent Assembly as Royalist member for the Department of the Gard.—B.

[497] I omit a quotation from Reboul.—T.

[498] Plautus spent some years in the service of a baker in Rome.—T.

[499] Joseph Justus Scaliger (1540-1609), the Protestant philosopher, Professor of Literature at the University of Leyden, a distinguished philologist and founder of the system of modern chronology.—T.

[500] 1622.—T.

[501] The Canal des Deux-Mers, also known as the Canal du Midi or de Languedoc, joins the Atlantic and Mediterranean.—T.

[502] The project of the canal, first formed under Francis I., was executed by Colbert's orders under Louis XIV. in the years 1666-1681. I omit the quotation from Corneille.—T.

[503] Paule Baronne de Fontenille (1518-1610), née de Viguier, nicknamed Fair Paule by King Francis I., who saw her as a child. She married first the Sire de Bayganuet, and later Philippe de Laroche, Baron de Fontenille. Her beauty, which she retained until extreme old age, was so intense that her resolution to stay at home, in order to save herself from being pestered with the admiration of the people, was checkmated by a resolution of the Capitouls or municipal officers of Toulouse, who ordered her to show herself in public, with uncovered features, two days in the week. La Belle Paule was as virtuous as she was beautiful.—T.

[504] Henri II. Maréchal Duc de Montmorency (1595-1632), revolted against Louis XIII., was defeated and taken prisoner at Castelnaudary, and tried and beheaded at Toulouse.—T.

[505] Claude Fauriel (1772-1844), a capable literary critic and considerable linguist. He translated and published in 1837 the Histoire de la croisade contre les hérétiques albigeois, écrits en vers provençaux par un poète contemporain, from which the above extract is taken.—T.

[506] Simon Baron, later Comte, de Montfort (d. 1218), known as the Machabee of his century, the leader of the crusade against the Albigenses, of whom he put some 60,000 or more to the sword. Simon de Montfort was killed at Toulouse, 25 June 1218.—T.

[507] Jacques de Cujas (1522-1590), the famous jurist.—T.

[508] Margaret of France, Duchesse de Berry, afterwards Duchess of Savoy (1523-1574), married in 1559 to Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy. Her subjects named her the Mother of the Peoples.—T.

[509] Margaret of Valois, Queen of Navarre (1552-1615), married in 1572 to the Prince of Béarn, afterwards Henry IV., and III. King of France and Navarre.—T.

[510] Gui du Faur, Seigneur de Pibrac (1529-1584), represented France at the Council of Trent and accompanied Henry III. to Poland. His Quatrains moraux have been universally translated, and he also published various political writings.—T.

[511] Florio's Montaigne, the Third Booke, chap. IX.: Of Vanitie.—T.

[512] Raymond IV. Count of Toulouse, Duke of Bordeaux, and Marquis of Provence (circa 1042-1105), one of the leaders of the First Crusade (1096), and one of the first to storm the walls of Jerusalem.—T.

[513] Louis Gabriel Léonce Guilhaud de Lavergne (1809-1880), a member of the Right in the Chamber of Deputies, became "reconciled" to the Republic, and was ultimately elected a Life Senator in 1875.—B.

[514] Mademoiselle Honorine Gasc, the owner of an admirable voice, married Herr Ol de Kop, Danish Consul at Bordeaux and Paris.—B.

[515] Clémence Isaure, a wealthy lady of Toulouse, who restored the Floral Games at Toulouse in 1490, and left large sums of money to the town to provide for the expenses of annual competitions in the art of poetry.—T.

[516] Claude Emmanuel Luillier Chapelle (1626-1686) and François Le Coigneux de Bachaumont (1624-1702), joint authors of the Voyage and other Epicurean pieces.—T.

[517] "Ah, how happy one would be
In this fair seductive spot
If, by Sylvia ne'er forgot,
Loving to eternity,
With her he could cast his lot!"—T

[518] The Chateau Trompette has also since been destroyed.—T.

[519] Joseph Spon (1647-1685), a French Protestant antiquarian.—T.

[520] "Ah, why do they throw down those columns of the gods,
The work of the great Cæsars, a tutelary shrine?"—T.

[521] The Duchesse de Berry was imprisoned at Blaye Castle in 1833.—T.

[522] In 1797 La Harpe had published his eloquent Du Fanatisme dans la langue révolutionnaire.—B.

[523] This poem appeared in 1814, with the title, Le Triomphe de la Religion, ou le Roi martyr.—B.

[524] "But if they ventured all, 'twas you permitted all:
The viler the oppressor, the more infamous the slave."—T.

[525] On the 9th of August 1797, La Harpe, then a widower and fifty-seven years of age, married, at the instance of his friend M. Récamier, Mademoiselle de Hatte-Longuerue, a very beautiful girl of twenty-three. Her mother, a penniless widow, concealed from the bridegroom any repugnance that Mademoiselle de Longuerue entertained for the match; but three weeks after the marriage the latter declared this repugnance to be invincible, and asked for a divorce. La Harpe behaved like a gallant gentleman and a Christian: he was unable to lend himself to the divorce, forbidden as it was by the religious law; but he allowed it to take place, and forgave the young lady the outcry and scandal produced by this rupture.—B.

[526] Job iv. 15, 16.—T.

[527] Dante, Inferno, xiv. 46.—B.

[528] The Abbé Jacques André Émery (1732-1811), author of the Esprit (later Pensées) de Leibnitz, the Christianisme de Bacon, the Pensées de Descartes, and many other works of a religious tendency.—T.

[529] Joseph Cardinal Comte Fesch, Archbishop of Lyons (1763-1839), was the half-brother of Madame Bonaparte, Napoleon's mother. He was made Archbishop of Lyons in 1802, a cardinal and Ambassador to Rome in 1803, Grand Almoner of the Empire, a count, and a senator in 1805. Later he refused the Archbishopric of Paris, opposed Napoleon's wishes with regard to Pius VII. in 1810, was disgraced and sent into exile in his diocese, where he remained till 1814. After the Emperor's abdication, he retired to Rome, where he lived for twenty-five years, refusing to surrender his archbishopric till the day of his death, 13 May 1839.—T.

[530] In Auvergne.—T.

[531] Talleyrand was Foreign Minister from 1796 to 1807.—T.

[532] The Abbé Pierre Étienne de Bonnevie (1761-1849), a great friend of M. and Madame de Chateaubriand, and a very witty priest.—B.

[533] Anne Antoine Jules Duc de Clermont-Tonnerre, Bishop of Châlons-sur-Marne (1749-1830). Before returning from the Emigration, he had placed his resignation in the hands of the Sovereign Pontiff, in accordance with the terms of the Concordat. Under the Restoration he became a peer of France (1814), Archbishop of Toulouse (1820), and a cardinal (1822).—B.

[534] Pope Pius VII. (vide infra, [p. 220]) was a Chiaramonti. This name is the Italian equivalent for Clermont.—T.

[535] "Alps, ye have not by my hard fate been torn!
On you time leaves no sign;
The years have lightly by your brows been borne
That heavy weigh on mine.

When first across your rugged walls I passed,
Dazzled with hope's bright rays,
Like the horizon, a future, boundless, vast,
Lay spread before my gaze."

Italy at my feet, and all the world before me!"—T.

[536] Chateaubriand himself had probably not known "that" long, and had learnt it from his young friend Jean Jacques Ampère, the only man in France who at that time interested himself in Scandinavian matters.—B.

[537] This "Fotrad, son of Eupert," is a little far-fetched. When the author was writing this part of his Memoirs his mind was still full of his long and learned researches preparatory to the writing of his Études historiques and his chapters on the Franks.—B.

[538] Odet de Foix, Maréchal Vicomte de Lautrec (1485-1528), was Lieutenant-General in Italy under Francis I., and subdued a part of the Duchy of Milan.—T.

[539] Francesco di Melzi, Duca di Lodi (1753-1826), was Vice-president of the Cisalpine Republic, organized by General Bonaparte in 1797, which in 1802 took the name of the Italian Republic. When, in 1805, it became the Kingdom of Italy, with Napoleon for its King and Eugène de Beauharnais for its Viceroy, Melzi was appointed Grand Chancellor and Keeper of the Seals. In 1807 he was created a duke.—B.

[540] Napoleon Charles Lucien Prince Murat (1803-1873), second son of Joachim Murat, was born 16 May 1803. He was made a senator in 1852, and a member of the civil family of the Emperor Napoleon III. in 1853, with the title of Imperial Highness. He was Grand Master of Freemasons from 1852 to 1862.—B.

[541] The feast of SS. Peter and Paul falls on the 29th of June.—T.

[542] St. Francis of Assisi, honoured on the 4th of October.—T.

[543] François Cacault (1743-1805), French Minister Plenipotentiary in Rome from 1801 to 1803.—B.

[544] The Chevalier Artaud de Montor, author of several works, of which the most important is his Histoire du pape Pie VII.—B.

[545] Gregorio Luigi Barnaba Chiaramonti, Pope Pius VII. (1740-1823), was elected to the Papacy in 1800. He signed the Concordat with Bonaparte in 1801, crowned him Emperor in Paris in 1804, but excommunicated him in 1809, after the invasion of the Papal States. Napoleon had him kidnapped and taken to Savona, and thence to Fontainebleau, where Pope Pius was kept in captivity until 1814. On returning to his States he had the generosity to give an asylum to the members of his persecutor's family.—T.

[546] Ercole Cardinal Consalvi (1757-1824), Secretary of State to Pius VII., and one of the greatest statesmen of the century. He too signed the famous Concordat, and he too was imprisoned for some time by Napoleon. He represented the Pope at the Congress of Vienna in 1814.—T.

[547] Charles Emanuel IV., King of Sardinia (1751-1819), succeeded his father Victor Amedeus III. in 1796, was obliged to surrender his continental possessions to the French Republic in 1798, and retired to Sardinia. In 1802 he abdicated and was succeeded by his brother Victor Emanuel I. He ended his days in Rome as a Jesuit. Charles Emanuel IV. became Heir in Line of the House of Stuart on the death of the Cardinal of York (Henry IX.) in 1807, and appears in the Jacobite Calendars as Charles IV. King of England.—T.

[548] The Abbé Nicolas Silvestre Guillon (1760-1847) had been chaplain, reader, and librarian to the Princesse de Lamballe. He hid himself under the Terror and reappeared in 1801 to publish his Recherches sur le Concordat, which caused him to be confined in the Temple for four months. On returning from Rome he became Professor of Rhetoric at the new University. In 1810 he was appointed to the Faculty of Theology in Paris, and for thirty years professed sacred eloquence in that faculty, of which he ultimately became the dean. He became chaplain to the Orleans Family in 1818, and in 1831 Louis-Philippe named him for the See of Beauvais, which, owing to a technical misdemeanour, he was not allowed to accept. Having confessed his error, he was in the course of the next year installed as Bishop of Morocco in partibus.—T.

[549] Marie Thérèse Princesse de Lamballe, née Princesse de Savoie-Carignan (1749-1792), was murdered at the prison of the Force in September 1792.—T.

[550] Antoine François Philippe Dubois-Descours, Marquis de La Maisonfort (1778-1827), had returned from the Emigration at the commencement of the Consulate, and was arrested and confined in the island of Elba, whence he escaped to Rome. Under the Restoration, he sat for a time in Parliament and represented France as Minister Plenipotentiary at Florence.—B.

[551] Louis François Bertin (1766-1841), usually known as Bertin the Elder, to distinguish him from his brother Pierre Louis Bertin de Vaux, together with whom he bought the Journal des Débats in 1799, and immeasurably improved the property. He was deprived of it in 1811, but revived the paper in 1814, and vigorously supported the Restoration until 1830, when he allied himself to Louis-Philippe and the new monarchy.—T.

[552] Pierre Joseph Briot (1771-1827) opposed Bonaparte in the Council of the Five Hundred, but nevertheless obtained his appointment as Government Commissary-General in Elba through the influence of Lucien Bonaparte. On Napoleon's coronation as Emperor, Briot went to Italy, and held various offices under Joseph and Joachim Murat, Kings of Naples. He refused to accept titles or decorations from either of these monarchs, which is probably the reason why Chateaubriand speaks of him as "the Republican" Briot.—B.

[553] The Princesse Pauline Borghèse (1780-1825), née Bonaparte, was Napoleon's second sister. She married General Leclerc in 1797, and shortly after his death married Prince Camille Borghèse (1803), from whom she soon separated, leaving Italy to reside at the Château de Neuilly. She enjoyed the title of Duchess of Guastalla from 1806 to 1814. In the latter year, she devoted herself wholly to Napoleon, accompanying him to Elba, and placing her diamonds at his disposal. In her later years, she became reconciled to her husband and lived with him at Florence. Pauline Borghèse was one of the most beautiful of women of her time. She sat to Canova for a nude Venus, and was doubtless in no way shy of "making her toilet" before Chateaubriand.—T.

[554] "I perish last and most wretched of all!"—T.

[555] "My days do not warrant the price of a sigh."—T.

[556] Madame de Sévigné's seat in Brittany.—B.

[557] This house stood near the Trinità-del-Monte, and was known by the name of the Villa Margherita.—B.

[558] Jean Baptiste Louis Georges Seroux d'Agincourt (1730-1814), a distinguished antiquarian and archæologist. He had been a farmer-general under Louis XV., and amassed a huge fortune, which he devoted to study and the cultivation of the arts. After visiting England, Holland, Germany, and Italy, he settled in Rome, in 1778, where he became intimate with the Cardinal de Bernis and Azara, the Spanish Ambassador and art-patron, and compiled his great work, the Histoire de l'Art par les Monuments, depuis le IV^e siècle jusqu'au XVI^e, in 6 volumes folio, with 336 plates.—T.

[559] Isaias xxii. 18.—T.

[560] Barbara Juliana Baroness Krüdener (1764-1824), née von Vietinghoff-Scheel, a famous Russian mystic, was married, when fourteen years of age, to Baron Krüdener, Russian Ambassador in Berlin. After leading a very dissipated life, and publishing her well-known novel, Valérie, ou Lettres de Gustave de Linar à Ernest de G. (1803), she suddenly, in 1807, withdrew from the world, gave way to exalted devotion, and pretended to have received from Heaven a mission for the regeneration of Christianity. She travelled through Germany, visiting the prisons, preaching in the open air, and converting men by the thousand. In 1814, she came into contact with the foreign sovereigns then in Paris, exercised a great ascendant over the Emperor Alexander, foretold to him the return of Napoleon from Elba and his ultimate fall, and inspired him with the idea of the Holy Alliance. She next resumed her travels through Switzerland and the various States of Germany, but her extraordinary influence began to be dreaded, and she was expelled wherever she went. In 1822, she took refuge in the Crimea, where she founded an institution for sinners and criminals, and died at Karasu-Bazar on Christmas Day 1824.—T.

[561] Joseph Michaud (1767-1839), author of the Printemps d'un proscrit and a History of the Crusades, and a member of the French Academy. In 1795, he was condemned to death for professing Royalist opinions in his paper, the Quotidienne, but succeeded in evading execution of the sentence, which was revoked in 1796. He was appointed Press Censor under the Restoration.—T.

[562] The Comte Guillaume de La Luzerne, who in 1787 married Madame de Beaumont's elder sister, Mademoiselle Victoire de Montmorin, was the nephew of the Comte de La Luzerne, the ambassador, and son of César Henri de La Luzerne, Minister of Marine under Louis XVI. Chateaubriand appears to have confused the two.—B.

[563] The Saint-Germains, husband (Germain Couhaillon) and wife, had been for thirty-eight years in the service of the Montmorin family. Chateaubriand afterwards took them into his own service, which they never left.—B.

[564] Auguste de Montmorin (d. 1793), a naval officer, had perished in a storm when returning from the Mauritius.—B.

[565] Annibale della Genga, Pope Leo XII. (1760-1829), succeeded Pope Pius VII. in 1823.—T.

[566] This tomb, which faces that of the Cardinal de Bernis at San Luigi dei Francesi, was erected by Chateaubriand himself at a cost of some nine thousand francs.—B.

[567] And not in 1827, as is given in all the earlier editions of the Memoirs. Chateaubriand spent the whole of the year 1827 in Paris. It was not until 1828, under the Mortignac Ministry, that he was appointed to the Embassy in Rome.—B.

[568] Greek Anthology, VII. 346.—B.

[569] M. de Fontanes' friendship goes much too far: Madame de Beaumont knew me better; she no doubt felt that, if she had left me her fortune, I should not have accepted it.—Author's Note.

[570] Madame de Beaumont left her books to Chateaubriand in her will, dated Paris, 15 May 1802.—B.

[571] The words italicized are in English.—T.

[572] Baron Matthieu de Staël, Madame de Staël's second son, who died while still very young.—T.

[573] In 1802, for her opposition to Bonaparte.—T.

[574] Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand Baron von Humboldt (1767-1835), the eminent Prussian diplomatist and philologist, and the friend and correspondent of all the literary eminences of his time.—T.

[575] John xi. 44.—T.

[576] The Lettre à M. de Fontanes, on the Roman Campagna, is dated to January 1804, and first appeared in the Mercure de France, in its issue of March 1804.—B.

[577] Rome, December 1803.—B.

[578] Cf. Rousseau's Confessions.—T.

[579] Gen. III. 22.—T.

[580] Jean Henri Joachim Hostein Vicomte Lainé (1767-1835) displayed considerable independence in the Legislative Body, of which he was a member for the Department of the Gironde. Under the Restoration, he was Minister of the Interior from 1816 to 1818. In 1823, he was made a viscount and a peer of France. He had become a member of the French Academy in 1818, although he had never produced any literary work, properly speaking.—T.

[581] Martyrs, V.—B.

[582] Antonio Canova (1757-1822), the famous sculptor. In 1819 he was sent to Paris as a special ambassador from the Pope.—T.

[583] Now the Hôtel de France et de Lorraine, at No. 5, Rue de Beaune.—B.

[584] Not the 20th, as the previous editions and the manuscript of the Memoirs have it. This was clearly a slip of the pen. The execution of the Duc d'Enghien took place, not on the 20th, but on the 21st of March 1804.—B.

[585] Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne (1769-1834), private secretary to Napoleon I. and Minister of State under Louis XVIII. The Revolution of 1830 and the consequent loss of his fortune caused him to lose his reason, and he died in a madhouse. His Memoirs, written by himself and revised by M. de Villemarest were published in ten volumes, 1829-1831.—T.

[586] Mémoires de M. de Bourrienne, vol. V. p. 348.—B.

[587] Here again the manuscript gives the 20th of March in error.—B.

[588] Chateaubriand's letter of resignation ran as follows:

"Citizen Minister,

"The doctors have just stated that Madame de Chateaubriand's state of health is such as to raise fears for her life. As it is absolutely impossible for me to leave my wife in these circumstances, or to expose her to the danger of a journey, I beg Your Excellency to approve that I return to you the credentials and instructions which you have sent me for the Valais. I also trust to your extreme kindness to persuade the First Consul to accept the painful reasons which prevent me to-day from undertaking the mission with which he was pleased to honour me. As I do not know whether my position requires me to take any other steps, I venture to appeal to your usual indulgence, Citizen Minister, for orders and advice; I shall receive these with the gratitude which I shall not cease to feel for your past kindnesses.

"I have the honour to greet you respectfully,

"Chateaubriand.

"Hôtel de France, Rue de Beaune, Paris.

"1 Germinal Year XII [22 March 1804]."—B.

[589] Moreau had been arrested on the 15th of February; Pichegru on the 28th of February; and Georges Cadoudal on the 9th of March 1804.—B.

[590] Jean Claude Clausel de Coussergues (1759-1846), a distinguished magistrate and orator. Under the Restoration, he became a deputy and a member of the Court of Appeal. He resigned after the Revolution of 1830.—B.

[591] Prov. VI. 17.—T.

[592] John viii. 43.—T.

[593] Talleyrand's letter did not arrive until ten days after the letter of resignation, and was thus worded:

"12 Germinal [2 April 1804].

"Citizen,

"I have brought to the notice of the First Consul the motives which prevent you from accepting the Legation in the Valais, to which you had been appointed.

"The Citizen Consul had been pleased to give you a proof of confidence. The same feelings of good-will have caused him to learn with regret the reasons which do not permit you to fulfill that mission.

"I must also express to you the great interest which I attached to the new relations which I should have had to maintain with you; and to this regret, which is personal to myself, I add that of seeing my department deprived of your talents and services."—B.

[BOOK III][594]

Death of the Duc d'Enghien—The year 1804—General Hulin—The Duc de Rovigo—M. de Talleyrand—Part played by each—Bonaparte, his sophistry and remorse—Conclusions to be drawn from the whole story—Enmities engendered by the death of the Duc D'Enghien—An article in the Mercure—Change in the life of Bonaparte.

Like the migratory birds, I am seized in the month of October with a restlessness which would oblige me to change my clime, were I still strong on the wing and swift as the hours: the clouds flitting across the sky make me long to flee. In order to cheat this instinct, I made for Chantilly. I have wandered on the lawn, where old keepers crawl along the border of the woods. Some crows, flying in front of me over broom, coppice and glades, have led me to the Commelle Ponds. Death has breathed upon the friends who used to accompany me to the castle of Queen Blanche [595]: the sites of these solitudes were but a sad horizon, half-opened for a moment on the side of my past. In the days of René, I should have found mysteries of life in the little stream of the Thève: it steals hidden among horse-tails and mosses; reeds screen it from sight; it dies in the ponds which it feeds with its youth, ever expiring, ever renewed: those ripples used to charm me when I bore within myself the desert with the phantoms which smiled to me, for all their melancholy, and which I decked with flowers.

Walking back along the hedges, now scarcely traced, I was surprised by the rain; I took shelter beneath a beech: its last leaves were falling like my years; its top was stripping itself like my head; its trunk was marked with a red circle, to be cut down like myself. Now that I have returned to my inn, with a harvest of autumn plants and in a mood little suited for joy, I will tell you of the death of M. le Duc d'Enghien while within sight of the ruins of Chantilly.

Protest of Louis XVIII.

This death at first froze all hearts with terror; men dreaded a return of the reign of Robespierre. Paris thought it was seeing again one of those days which men do not see more than once, the day of the execution of Louis XVI. Bonaparte's servants, friends and family were struck with consternation. Abroad, though the language of diplomacy promptly stifled the popular feeling, the latter none the less stirred the hearts of the crowd. In the exiled family of the Bourbons, the blow struck through and through: Louis XVIII. returned to the King of Spain [596] the Order of the Golden Fleece, with which Bonaparte had just been decorated; it was accompanied by a letter which did honour to the royal mind:

"Sir and dear Cousin,

"There can be nothing in common between me and the great criminal whom audacity and fortune have placed on a throne which he has had the barbarity to stain with the blood of a Bourbon, the Duc d'Enghien. Religion may prompt me to forgive an assassin; but the tyrant of my people must always be my enemy. Providence, for inexplicable reasons, can condemn me to end my days in exile; but never shall my contemporaries nor posterity be able to say that I showed myself in time of adversity unworthy to occupy, till my last breath, the throne of my ancestors."

We must not forget another name connected with that of the Duc d'Enghien: Gustavus Adolphus [597], since dethroned and exiled, was the only one of the kings then reigning who dared to raise a voice to save the young French Prince. He dispatched an aide-de-camp from Carlsruhe bearing a letter for Bonaparte; the letter arrived too late: the last of the Condés was no more. Gustavus Adolphus returned the ribbon of the Black Eagle to the King of Prussia [598], as Louis XVIII. had returned the Golden Fleece to the King of Spain. Gustavus declared to the heir of Frederic the Great that, "according to the laws of chivalry, he could not consent to be the brother-in-arms of the butcher of the Duc d'Enghien [599]." There is an inexpressibly bitter irony in these almost mad memories of chivalry, everywhere extinct, save in the heart of an unhappy king for a murdered friend; honour to the noble sympathies of misfortune, which stand aloof, not understood, in a world unknown to men!

Alas, we had undergone too many different tyrannies; our characters, broken by a succession of hardships and oppressions, lacked sufficient energy to allow our grief long to wear mourning for the death of young Condé: gradually the tears dried up; fear overflowed with congratulations on the dangers from which the First Consul had just escaped; it wept with gratitude at having been saved by a so sacred immolation. Nero [600], at Seneca's [601] dictation, wrote to the Senate a letter of apology for the murder of Agrippina [602]; the Senators, delighted, heaped blessings upon the magnanimous son who had not feared to pluck out his heart by so salutary an act of parricide! Society soon returned to its pleasures; it was afraid of its mourning: after the Terror, the victims who had been spared danced, forced themselves to appear happy and, fearing lest they should be suspected guilty of the crime of memory, displayed the same gaiety as when they went to the scaffold.

The Duc D'Enghien's arrest.

The Duc d'Enghien was not arrested point-blank and without precautions: Bonaparte had had a report drawn up of the number of Bourbons in Europe. In a council to which Messieurs de Talleyrand and Fouché were summoned, it was recognised that the Duc d'Angoulême was at Warsaw, with Louis XVIII.; the Comte d'Artois and the Duc de Berry in London, with the Princes de Condé and de Bourbon. The youngest of the Condés was at Ettenheim, in the Duchy of Baden. It was found that two English agents, Messrs. Taylor and Drake, had conducted intrigues in that quarter. On the 16th of June 1803 the Duc de Bourbon [603] warned his grandson against a possible arrest by means of a note addressed to him from London, which is still preserved. Bonaparte summoned the two Consuls, his colleagues, to his side. He first bitterly reproached M. Réal [604] for having left him in ignorance of what was being planned against him. He patiently listened to the objections. The one to express himself with the greatest vigour was Cambacérès [605]. Bonaparte thanked him and took no further notice. This is what I have seen in the Memoirs of Cambacérès, which one of his nephews, M. de Cambacérès, a peer of France, has permitted me to consult with an obligingness of which I retain a grateful recollection. The bomb once thrown does not return: it goes where the engineer flings it, and falls. To execute Bonaparte's orders, it was necessary to violate the territory of Germany, and the territory was violated forthwith. The Duc d'Enghien was arrested at Ettenheim. With him were found, instead of General Dumouriez, only the Marquis de Thumery and some other Emigrants of little note: this ought to have shown the mistake. The Duc d'Enghien was taken to Strasburg. The beginning of the catastrophe of Vincennes has been narrated by the Prince himself: he has left a little road-journal from Ettenheim to Strasburg; the hero of the tragedy steps before the curtain to recite this prologue:

"Thursday 15 March, at Ettenheim, my house surrounded," says the Prince, "by a detachment of dragoons and some pickets of gendarmes, total about two hundred men, two generals, the colonel of the dragoons, Colonel Chariot of the Strasburg Gendarmerie, at five o'clock [606]. At half-past five, doors broken in, taken to the Mill, near the Tile-works. My papers taken away, sealed up. Taken in a cart, between two lines of fusiliers, to the Rhine. Put on board a boat for Rhisnau. Landed and marched on foot as far as Pfortsheim. Breakfasted at the inn. Got into a carriage with Colonel Chariot, the quarter-master of the gendarmes, a gendarme on the box and Grunstein. Arrived at Strasburg, at Colonel Chariot's, about half-past five. Transferred half an hour after, in a hackney-coach, to the citadel.

. . . . . . . .

"Sunday 18, they come to fetch me at half-past one in the morning. They do not give me time to dress. I embrace my unhappy companions, my servants. I leave alone with two officers of gendarmes and two gendarmes. Colonel Chariot told me that we were going to the general of division, who has received orders from Paris. Instead of that, I find a carriage with six post-horses in the Church Square. Lieutenant Petermann gets in beside me, Blitersdorff the quarter-master on the box, two gendarmes inside, the other out."

Here the ship-wrecked man, on the point of being engulfed, interrupts his log.

The carriage arrived at about four o'clock in the evening at one of the barriers of the capital, where the Strasburg road ends, and instead of driving into Paris, followed the outer boulevard and stopped at Vincennes Castle. The Prince alighted from the carriage in the inner court-yard and was taken to a room of the fortress, where he was locked in and went to sleep. As the Prince was approaching Paris, Bonaparte affected an air of calmness which was not natural.

On the 18th of March, which was Palm Sunday, he went to the Malmaison. Madame Bonaparte [607], who, with all her family, was informed of the Prince's arrest, spoke to him of this arrest. Bonaparte replied:

"You don't understand politics."

Colonel Savary [608] had become one of Bonaparte's intimates. Why? Because he had seen the First Consul weep at Marengo. Exceptional men should distrust their tears, which place them beneath the yoke of vulgar men. Tears are one of those weaknesses which enable an eyewitness to make himself master of a great man's resolutions.

He is taken to Vincennes.

They say that the First Consul himself had all the orders for Vincennes drawn up. One of these orders provided that, if the expected sentence was a death sentence, it was to be executed on the spot.

I believe this version, although I cannot vouch for its truth, since those orders are missing. Madame de Rémusat [609], who was playing chess with the First Consul at the Malmaison on the evening of the 20th of March, heard him mutter some verses on the clemency of Augustus [610]; she thought that Bonaparte was coming to himself again and that the Prince was saved [611]. No, destiny had pronounced its oracle!

When Savary reappeared at Malmaison, Madame Bonaparte divined the whole misfortune. The First Consul had locked himself up alone for many hours. And then the wind blew, and all was ended.

An order of Bonaparte, dated 29 Ventôse, Year XII [612], had decreed that a military commission, consisting of seven members appointed by General the Governor of Paris [613] should meet at Vincennes to try "the ci-devant Duc d'Enghien, accused of bearing arms against the Republic," etc.

In fulfilment of this decree, Joachim Murat on the same day, 29 Ventôse, appointed the seven officers who were to form the said commission, namely:

General Hulin [614], commanding the Foot Grenadiers of the Consular Guard, president;

Colonel Guitton, commanding the 1st Regiment of Cuirassiers;

Colonel Bazancourt, commanding the 4th Regiment of Light Infantry;

Colonel Ravier, commanding the 18th Regiment of Infantry of the Line;

Colonel Barrois, commanding the 96th Regiment of Infantry of the Line;

Colonel Rabbe, commanding the 2nd Regiment of the Municipal Guard of Paris;

Citizen Dautancourt, Major of the Gendarmerie d'Élite, with the functions of captain-judge-advocate.

Captain Dautancourt, Major Jacquin of the Légion d'Élite, two foot gendarmes of the same corps, Lerva and Tharsis, and Citizen Noirot, a lieutenant in the same corps, went to the Duc d'Enghien's and awoke him: he had but four hours to wait before returning to his sleep. The judge-advocate, assisted by Molin, a captain in the 18th Regiment, chosen as registrar by the aforesaid judge-advocate, examined the Prince.

And examined.

Asked: His surname, Christian names, age, and birthplace?

Answered: That his name was Louis Antoine Henri de Bourbon, Duc d'Enghien, born 2 August 1772 at Chantilly.

Asked: Where he had resided since he left France?

Answered: That, after accompanying his relations, Condé's Corps having been formed, he had served through the whole war, and that, before that, he had been through the campaign of 1792, in Brabant, with Bourbon's Corps.

Asked: If he had not gone to England, and if that Power did not still allow him a salary?

Answered: That he had never been there; that England still allowed him his pay, which was all he had to live upon.

Asked: What rank he filled in Condé's Army?

Answered: Commander of the Advance Guard in 1796; before that campaign, as a volunteer at his grandfather's headquarters; and, ever since 1796, Commander of the Advance Guard.

Asked: If he knew General Pichegru, and if he had had relations with him?

Answered: "I have never seen him, to my knowledge. I have had no relations with him. I know that he wished to see me. I am glad that I never knew him, because of the base methods which he is said to have wished to employ, if true."

Asked: If he knew ex-General Dumouriez, and if he had had relations with him?

Answered: "Not with him either."

"Whence," continues the report, "were drawn up these presents, which have been signed by the Duc d'Enghien, Major Jacquin, Lieutenant Noirot, the two gendarmes, and captain-judge-advocate.

"Before signing this present report the Duc d'Enghien said:

"'I earnestly make a request to be granted a private audience of the First Consul. My name, my rank, my way of thinking and the horror of my situation make me hope that he will not refuse my request.'"

At two o'clock on the morning of the 21st of March, the Duc d'Enghien was taken to the room in which the commission sat, and repeated what he had said in examination by the judge-advocate. He persisted in his declaration: he added that he was willing to make war, and that he wished for service in the new war of England against France.

"Asked whether he had anything to put forward in the plea of his defense; answered that he had nothing more to say.

"The president ordered the prisoner to withdraw; the council deliberated with closed doors; the president took the votes, commencing with the junior in rank; next, the president having given his opinion last, the Duc d'Enghien was unanimously declared guilty, and the Court applied Article ... of the law of the... thus worded.... and in consequence condemned him to the penalty of death. Ordered, on the demand of the captain-judge-advocate, that the present sentence, after being read to the condemned man, shall be executed directly, in presence of the different detachments of the corps of the garrison.

"Given, concluded, and tried at one sitting, at Vincennes, on the day, month and year as above, as witness our hands."

The grave having been "dug, filled up, and closed," ten years of forgetfulness, of general assent and of unexampled glory sat down upon it; the grass sprang up to the sound of the salvoes which proclaimed victories, by the light of the illuminations which shed their lustre over the pontifical coronation, the marriage of the daughter of the Cæsars [615], and the birth of the King of Rome [616]. Only some rare sympathizers rambled in the wood, hazarding a furtive glance at the bottom of the moat in the direction of the lamentable spot, while a few prisoners watched them from the top of the donjon in which they were confined. Then came the Restoration: the earth of the tomb was stirred, and with it men's consciences; each then thought it his duty to explain himself.

Duc D'Enghien.

M. Dupin the Elder [617] published his Discussion; M. Hulin, the president of the military commission, spoke; M. le Duc de Rovigo entered into the controversy by accusing M. de Talleyrand; a third party replied on behalf of M. de Talleyrand; and Napoleon raised his mighty voice on the rock of St. Helena.

These documents must be reproduced and studied, in order to assign to each the part due to him and the place which he should occupy in this drama. It is night, and we are at Chantilly; it was night when the Duc d'Enghien was at Vincennes.

M. Dupin's pamphlet.

When M. Dupin published his pamphlet he sent it to me with the following letter:

"Paris, 10 November 1823.

Monsieur le Vicomte,

"Pray accept a copy of my publication relative to the murder of the Duc d'Enghien.

"It would have appeared long ago, had I not desired above all to respect the wish of Monseigneur le Duc de Bourbon, who, having been informed of my work, had communicated to me his desire that this deplorable affair might not be disinterred.

"But Providence having permitted others to take the initiative, it has become necessary to make the truth known, and after assuring myself that it was no longer insisted that I should remain silent, I have spoken with frankness and sincerity.

"I have the honour to be, with profound respect,
"monsieur le vicomte,

"Your Excellency's most humble and obedient servant,

"Dupin."

M. Dupin, whom I congratulated and thanked, revealed in his covering letter an unknown and touching instance of the noble and merciful virtues of the victim's father. M. Dupin commences his pamphlet thus:

"The death of the unfortunate Duc d'Enghien is one of the most afflicting events that ever befel the French nation: it dishonoured the consular government.

"A young prince, in the flower of his age, surprised by treachery on foreign soil, where he was sleeping in peace under the protection of the Law of Nations; dragged violently to France; indicted before pretended judges, who could in no case be his; accused of imaginary crimes; denied the assistance of counsel; examined and sentenced behind closed doors; put to death at night in the moat of the castle which was used as a State prison; so many virtues unheeded, such fond hopes destroyed, will ever stamp this catastrophe as one of the most revolting acts that an absolute government ever ventured to commit.

"If no form was respected; if the judges were incompetent; if they did not even take the trouble to mention in their judgment the date and text of the laws upon which they affected to ground their condemnation; if the unhappy Duc d'Enghien was shot in pursuance of a sentence signed in blank.... and only made regular after execution! then we have to do not only with the innocent victim of judicial error; the thing assumes its true name: it is an odious murder."

This eloquent exordium brings M. Dupin to the examination of the documents. He first proves the illegality of the arrest: the Duc d'Enghien was not arrested in France; he was in no way a prisoner of war, since he had not been taken with arms in his hands; he was not a prisoner in the civil sense, for no extradition had been demanded; it was a violent seizure of the person, comparable to the captures made by the pirates of Tunis and Algiers, an inroad of robbers, incursio latronum.

The jurist proceeds to discuss the incompetency of the military commission: cognizance of alleged plots hatched against the State has never been conferred upon military commissions.

Next follows the analysis of the judgment.

"The examination," continues M. Dupin, "took place on the 29 Ventôse at midnight. On the 30 Ventôse, at two o'clock in the morning, the Duc d'Enghien was brought before the military commission.

"On the minutes of the judgment we read, 'This day, the 30 Ventôse, Year XII of the Republic, at two o'clock in the morning.' The words, 'at two o'clock in the morning,' which were only inserted because it was in fact that time, are obliterated on the minutes without being replaced by any other indication.

"Not a single witness was heard or produced against the prisoner.

"The accused 'was declared guilty!' Guilty of what? The judgment does not say.

"Every judgment that pronounces a penalty is bound to contain a reference to the law by virtue of which such penalty is inflicted.

A scathing indictment.

"Well, in this case, none of these forms has been fulfilled: nothing in the official report bears witness that the commissioners had a copy of the law before them; nothing shows that the president read the text of the law before applying it. Far from it: the judgment in its material form affords the proof that the commissioners convicted without knowing either the date or the tenor of the law; for, in the minutes of the judgment, they have left in blank the date of the law, the number of the article, and the place in which the precise words should have been quoted. And yet it was on the minutes of a sentence framed in this state of imperfection that the noblest blood was shed by butchers!

"The deliberation must be secret, but the judgment must be pronounced in public: again, it is the law that speaks. Now the judgment of the 30 Ventôse certainly says, 'The council deliberated with closed doors;' but it does not mention that the doors were opened again, or intimate that the result of the deliberation was pronounced in a public sitting. Even had it said so, who would believe it? A public sitting at two o'clock in the morning, in the donjon of Vincennes, while all the issues of the castle were being guarded by gendarmes d'élite! But the fact is that they did not even take the precaution to resort to a lie: the judgment is silent on this point.

"This judgment is signed by the president and the six other commissioners, including the judge-advocate; but observe that the minutes are not signed by the registrar, whose concurrence, however, is necessary to give them authenticity.

"The sentence concludes with this terrible formula: 'shall be executed Forthwith, under the care of the captain-judge-advocate.'

"Forthwith! Cruel word, the work of the judges! Forthwith! And an express law, that of the 15 Brumaire, Year VI, granted the right of appeal for a new trial against any military judgment!"

Passing to the execution, M. Dupin continues as follows:

"Examined at night and tried at night, the Duc d'Enghien was also killed at night. This horrible sacrifice was to be consummated in the dark, in order that it might be said that all laws had been infringed, all, even those which prescribed that executions shall take place in public."

The jurist comes to the irregularities in the preliminaries:

"Article 19 of the law of the 13 Brumaire, Year V, declares that, after closing the examination, the judge-advocate shall tell the prisoner to 'choose a friend as his defender.' The prisoner shall have 'the power to choose that defender' among every class of citizen present on the spot; if he declares that he is unable to make that choice, the judge-advocate shall make it for him.

"Ah, no doubt the Prince had no friends[618] among those who surrounded him; this fact was cruelly declared to him by one of the abettors of that horrible scene!... Alas, why were we not present! Why was the prince not allowed to make an appeal to the bar of Paris! There he would have found friends of his unhappiness, defenders of his misfortune. ... It was apparently with a view to making the judgment presentable in the eyes of the public that a new edition was drawn up at leisure.... The tardy substitution of a second form of judgment, in appearance more regular than the first (although equally unjust), in no way detracts from the heinousness of having put the Duc d'Enghien to death by virtue of a rough draft of a judgment, hastily signed, and not even signed by all the requisite parties."

Such is M. Dupin's luminous pamphlet. Nevertheless I do not know that, in an act of the nature of that which the author examines, the greater or lesser regularity holds an important place: whether the Duc d'Enghien was strangled in a post-chaise between Strasburg and Paris or killed in the wood of Vincennes makes no difference. But is it not providential to see men, after long years, some showing the irregularity of a murder in which they had taken no part, others hastening, unasked, to the bar of public accusal? What, then have they heard? What voice from on high has summoned them to appear?

After the great jurist, here comes a blind veteran: he has commanded the Grenadiers of the Old Guard; what that means brave men know. His last wound he received from Malet [619], whose powerless lead remained lost in a face which had never turned from the fire. "Afflicted with blindness, withdrawn from the world, consoled only by the care of his family," to use his own words, the judge of the Duc d'Enghien appears to issue from his tomb at the call of the sovereign judge; he pleads his cause [620] without self-delusion or excuses:

General Hulin's pamphlet.

"Let there be no mistake," he says, "as to my intentions. I am not writing through fear, since my person is under the protection of laws emanating from the Throne itself, and since, under the government of a righteous king, I have nothing to dread from violence or lawlessness.... I write to tell the truth, even in what may be to my own detriment! So I do not pretend to justify even the form or the substance of the judgment; but I wish to show under what a powerful union of circumstances it was delivered; I wish to remove from myself and my colleagues the suspicion of having acted as party men. If we are still to receive blame, I wish also that men should say of us:

"'They were very unfortunate.'"

General Hulin asserts that he was appointed president of a military commission without knowing its object; that when he arrived at Vincennes he was no wiser; that the other members of the commission knew as little; that M. Harel [621], the governor of the castle, told him, on being asked, that he knew nothing himself, adding:

"What can I do? I am nobody here now. Everything is done without my orders or participation: another man is in command here."

It was ten o'clock at night when General Hulin was relieved from his uncertainty by the communication of the documents. The hearing was opened at midnight, when the examination of the prisoner by the judge-advocate had been finished.

"The reading of the documents," says the president of the commission, "gave rise to an incident. We observed that, at the end of his examination before the judge-advocate, the Prince, before signing, wrote with his own hand some lines in which he expressed a wish to have an explanation with the First Consul. One of the members proposed that this request should be forwarded to the Government. The commission agreed; but at the same moment General ————, who had come and placed himself behind my chair, pointed out to us that this request was 'inopportune.' Moreover, we found no provision in the law authorizing us to suspend judgment. The commission therefore proceeded, reserving to itself the right to satisfy the prisoner's wishes after the trial."

So far General Hulin. Now, in a pamphlet by the Duc de Rovigo we read the following passage:

"There were, indeed, so many people that, as I arrived among the last, I found it difficult to make my way to the back of the president's chair, where I ultimately placed myself."

And so it was the Duc de Rovigo who had "placed himself behind the chair" of the president? But had he, or any other not forming one of the commission, the right to interfere in the proceedings of the commission, and to point out that a request was "inopportune"?

Let us hear the commander of the Grenadiers of the Old Guard speak of the courage of the young son of the Condés; he was a judge of it:

The Duc D'Enghien's courage.

"I proceeded to examine the prisoner; I must say that he stood up to us with a noble confidence, spurned the accusation that he had been directly or indirectly implicated in a plot to assassinate the First Consul; but also admitted that he had borne arms against France, saying, with a courage and a pride which did not for a moment permit us, in his own interest, to shake him on this point, 'that he had supported the rights of his family, and that a Condé could never re-enter France without arms in his hands. My birth and convictions,' he added, 'make me for ever the enemy of your government.'

"His resolute confessions distressed his judges to the utmost. Ten times did we give him the opportunity to revise his statements, but throughout he persisted unshaken:

"'I perceive,' he said at intervals, 'the honourable intentions of the members of the commission; but I cannot avail myself of the terms they offer me.'

"And on being warned that military commissions judged without appeal:

"'I know that,' he replied, 'and I am quite aware of the danger which I am running; I only wish to have an interview with the First Consul.'"

Does the whole of our history contain a more pathetic page? New France sitting in judgment upon Old France, doing homage to her, presenting arms to her, saluting her colours, even while condemning her; the tribunal set up in the fortress in which the great Condé, when a prisoner, cultivated flowers; the General of the Grenadiers of Bonaparte's Guard seated face to face with the last descendant of the victor of Rocroi, feeling himself moved with admiration before the prisoner left without a defender and abandoned by the world, questioning him while the sound of the gravedigger digging the grave mingled with the young soldier's firm replies! A few days after the execution, General Hulin exclaimed:

"Oh, the brave young man! What courage! I should like to die like that!"

General Hulin, after speaking of the "minutes" and of the "second edition" of the judgment, says:

"As to the second edition, the only true one, as it did not convey the order for immediate execution, but only for the immediate reading of the judgment to the condemned man, the immediate execution could not have been the act of the commission, but only of those who took upon themselves the responsibility of hastening the fatal execution.

"Alas, our thoughts were engaged elsewhere! The judgment was scarcely signed when I began to write a letter in which, with the unanimous consent of the commission, I wrote to inform the First Consul of the desire which the Prince had expressed to have an interview with him, and also to entreat him to remit a penalty which the difficulty of our position did not permit us to elude.

"At that moment a man, who had never left the council-hall, and whom I would name at once did I not consider that, even when defending myself, I ought not to become an accuser, approached me and asked:

"'What are you doing there?'

"'I am writing to the First Consul,' I replied, 'to convey to him the wishes of the council and of the condemned man.'

"'Your business is done,' said he, taking the pen; 'this is now my affair.'

"I protest that I thought, as did several of my colleagues, that he meant to say, 'This is my affair, to inform the First Consul.' Taken in this sense, the reply left us the hope that the information would be none the less conveyed. And how could it have occurred to us that there was any one among us that had orders to neglect the formalities prescribed by law?"

The whole secret of this mournful catastrophe lies in this deposition. The veteran who, in daily expectation of dying on the battlefield, had learned from death the language of truth, concludes with these final words:

"I was talking of what had just happened, in the lobby adjoining the hall in which we had deliberated. Separate conversations were going forward; I was waiting for my carriage, which had not been allowed to drive into the inner court-yard, nor had those of the other members, thus delaying my departure and theirs. We were closed in, none of us having means to communicate with the outside, when an explosion was heard: a terrible noise that resounded at the bottom of our souls and froze them with terror and affright.

"Yes, I swear, in the name of all my colleagues, that this execution was not authorized by us: our judgment stated that a copy of it should be sent to the Minister for War, to the Chief Judge the Minister for Justice, and to the General-in-Chief the Governor of Paris.

"The order of execution could be given regularly only by the last-named; the copies had not yet been dispatched; they could not be finished before a portion of the day had elapsed. On my return to Paris I should have gone in search of the Governor, the First Consul, anybody! And suddenly a dreadful sound comes to reveal to us that the Prince no longer lives!

"We did not know whether he who so cruelly hastened on this fatal execution had orders: if he had none, he alone was responsible; if he had orders, the commission, knowing nothing of those orders, the commission, forcibly and illegally detained, the commission, whose last wish was for the Prince's safety, could neither foresee nor prevent their effect. It cannot be accused of the result.

"The lapse of twenty years has not allayed the bitterness of my regret!... Let me be accused of ignorance, of error, I acquiesce; let me be reproached with an obedience from which to-day, under similar circumstances, I should certainly know how to escape; with my attachment to a man whom I thought destined to promote the happiness of my country; with my loyalty to a government which I then considered lawful, and which had received my oath; but let some allowance be made to me, and also to my colleagues, for the fatal circumstances under which we were summoned to decide."

A weak defense, but you repent, general: peace be with you! If your sentence became the marching-orders of the last of the Condés, you will join the last conscript of our old mother-land in the advance-guard of the dead. The young soldier will gladly share his couch with the grenadier of the Old Guard: the France of Freiburg [622] and the France of Marengo will sleep together.

Enter the Duc de Rovigo.

M. le Duc de Rovigo, beating his breast, takes his place in the procession that comes to confess at the tomb. I had long been under the power of the Minister of Police; he fell under the influence which he supposed to be restored to me on the return of the Legitimacy: he communicated a portion of his Memoirs to me. Men in his position speak with wonderful candour of what they have done; they have no idea of what they are saying against themselves: accusing themselves without perceiving it, they do not suspect the existence of an opinion differing from theirs, both as regards the functions which they had undertaken and the line of conduct which they have observed. If they have been wanting in loyalty, they do not think that they have broken their oath; if they have taken upon themselves parts which are repugnant to other characters, they believe that they have done great services. Their ingenuousness does not justify them, but it excuses them.

M. le Duc de Rovigo consulted me on the chapters in which he treats of the death of the Duc d'Enghien: he wished to know my mind, precisely because he knew how I had acted; I valued this mark of his esteem and, repaying frankness with frankness, I advised him to publish nothing:

"Leave all this," said I, "to die out; in France, oblivion is not slow in coming. You imagine that you will clear Napoleon of a reproach, and throw back the fault upon M. de Talleyrand; but you do not sufficiently exonerate the former, nor do you sufficiently accuse the latter. You lay yourself open to attack from your enemies; they will not fail to reply to you. Why need you remind the public that you were in command of the Gendarmerie d'Élite at Vincennes? They were not aware of the direct part which you played in this fatal deed, and now you tell them of it. Throw the manuscript into the fire, general: I speak in your own interest."

Steeped in the maxims of the imperial government, the Duc de Rovigo thought that those maxims could be as well applied to the legitimate throne; he felt convinced that his pamphlet [623] would reopen the doors of the Tuileries to him.

It is partly by the light of this publication that posterity will trace the outlines of the phantoms of grief. I offered to hide the suspect who had come to ask shelter of me during the night; he did not accept the protection of my house.

M. de Rovigo tells the story of the departure of M. de Caulaincourt [624], whom he does not mention by name: he speaks of the kidnapping at Ettenheim, the prisoner's passing through Strasburg, and his arrival at Vincennes. After an expedition on the coast of Normandy, General Savary had returned to the Malmaison. He was summoned, at five o'clock in the evening of the 19th of March 1804, to the closet of the First Consul, who handed him a sealed letter to be carried to General Murat, the Governor of Paris. He flew to the general, crossing with the Minister of Foreign Relations on his way, and received the order to take the Gendarmerie d'Élite and go to Vincennes. He went there at eight o'clock in the evening, in time to see the members of the commission arrive. He soon made his way into the hall where the Prince was being tried, at one o'clock in the morning of the 21st, and took a seat behind the president. He gives the Duc d'Enghien's replies in about the same terms as they are given in the report of the one sitting. He told me that the Prince, after making his final explanations, with a quick movement took off his cap, laid it on the table and, with the air of a man resigning his life, said to the president:

His pitiful defense.

"I have nothing more to say, sir."

M. de Rovigo insists upon it that this sitting was in no way secret:

"The doors of the hall," he declares, "were open and free to any who cared to attend at that hour."

M. Dupin had already pointed out the confusion of this argument. In this connection M. Achille Roche [625], who appears to write for M. de Talleyrand, exclaims:

"The sitting was in no way secret! At midnight! Held in the inhabited portion of the castle, in the inhabited portion of a prison! Who, then, was present at this sitting? Gaolers, soldiers, executioners!"

No one was in a position to give more exact details concerning the moment and place of the thunder-clap than M. le Duc de Rovigo; let us hear what he says:

"After sentence had been pronounced, I withdrew with the officers of my corps, who like myself had been present during the proceedings, and joined the troops stationed on the esplanade of the castle. The officer who commanded the infantry of my legion came and told me, with deep emotion, that a piquet of men was required of him to execute the sentence of the military commission:

"'Give it,' I replied.

"'But where am I to post it?'

"'Where you may be sure to hurt nobody.'

"For already the roads were full of inhabitants of the populous environs of Paris on their way to attend the different markets.

"After carefully examining the ground, the officer chose the moat as the place where there was least danger of any one being hurt. M. le Duc d'Enghien was taken there by the stairs of the entrance-tower, on the park side, and there heard the sentence pronounced, which was put into effect."

Below this paragraph, the author of the memorial appends the following footnote:

"Between the passing of the sentence and its execution, a grave was dug, which gave rise to the report that it had been prepared prior to the judgment."

Unfortunately, we meet here with deplorable inaccuracies:

"M. de Rovigo contends," says M. Achille Roche, M. de Talleyrand's apologist, "that he obeyed orders! Who conveyed to him the order for the execution? It appears that it was a certain M. Delga, killed at Wagram. But whether it be M. Delga or not, if M. Savary is mistaken in mentioning M. Delga to us, no one, doubtless, to-day, will lay claim to the fame conferred upon that officer. M. de Rovigo is accused of having hastened the execution; it was not he, he replies: a man who is now dead told him that orders had been given to hasten it."

The Duc de Rovigo is not well inspired on the subject of the execution, which he describes as taking place in daylight; that would, besides, have altered nothing in the fact, and would simply mean the absence of a torch at the punishment.

"At the hour of sunrise, in the open air," asks the general, "what need was there for a lantern to see a man at six paces! Not that the sun," he adds, "was altogether bright and clear; a fine rain had fallen all night, and a damp mist still retarded, in some degree, its appearance. The execution took place at six o'clock in the morning: this fact is witnessed by irrefutable documents."

The execution.

But the general neither produces these documents nor tells us where to find them. The course of the trial shows that the Duc d'Enghien was tried at two o'clock in the morning and shot forthwith. Those words, "two o'clock in morning," which originally appeared on the first minutes of the sentence, were subsequently erased from the minutes. The official report of the exhumation proves, by the depositions of three witnesses, Madame Bon, the Sieur Godard and the Sieur Bounelet (the latter had helped to dig the grave), that the death penalty was effected at night. M. Dupin the Elder records the circumstance of a lantern fastened over the Duc d'Enghien's heart to serve as a mark, or held, with the same object, in the Prince's firm hand. Stories were told of a heavy stone taken from the grave with which the victim's head was crushed in. Lastly, the Duc de Rovigo is supposed to have boasted of possessing some of the spoils of the sacrifice; I myself have believed in these rumours; but the legal documents prove that they were unfounded.

From the official report, dated Wednesday the 20th of March 1816, of the physicians and surgeons entrusted with the exhumation of the corpse, it has been certified that the skull was broken, that "the upper jaw, separated entirely from the facial bones, contained twelve teeth; that the lower jaw, fractured in the middle, was divided in two, and showed only three teeth."

The body was lying flat upon its abdomen, the head being lower than the feet; there was a gold chain around the vertebrae of the neck.

The second official report of the exhumation (of the same date, 20 March 1816), "the general report," states that with the remains of the skeleton were found a purse in morocco-leather containing eleven pieces of gold, seventy pieces of gold enclosed in sealed rolls, some hair, shreds of clothing, remnants of his cap bearing marks of the bullets by which it had been pierced.

M. de Rovigo therefore took none of the spoils; the earth which had held them has restored them, and has borne witness to the general's honesty; no lantern was fastened over the Prince's heart, its fragments would have been found, as were those of the perforated cap; no heavy stone was taken from the grave; the fire of the piquet at six paces was enough to blow the head to pieces, to "separate the upper jaw from the facial bones," and so on.

To complete this mockery of human vanities were needed only the similar immolation of Murat, the Governor of Paris, the death of Bonaparte in captivity, and the inscription engraved upon the Duc d'Enghien's coffin:

"Here lies the body of the most high and mighty Prince of the Blood, Peer of France, died at Vincennes, 21 March 1804; aged 31 years, 7 months and 19 days."

The "body" was mere bare and shattered bones; the "high and mighty Prince," the broken fragments of a soldier's carcase; not a word to recall the catastrophe, not a word of blame or grief in this epitaph carved by a sorrowing family; a prodigious result of the respect which the century shows to the works and susceptibilities of the Revolution! In the same way, no time was lost in removing all traces of the mortuary chapel of the Duc de Berry.

What a sum total of annihilation! Bourbons, who returned to so little purpose to your palaces, you have busied yourselves with naught save exhumations and funerals: your time of life was passed. God has willed it so! The ancient glory of France perished beneath the eyes of the shade of the Great Condé, in a moat at Vincennes: perhaps at the very place where Louis IX., "to whom men resorted as to a saint.... seated himself at the foot of an oak, and where all who had any business with him came without ceremony and without hindrance from any usher or others; and whenever he heard anything that could be amended in the speeches of those who pleaded for others he most graciously corrected it himself, and all the people who had a cause to bring before him stood round him [626]."

The Duc d'Enghien asked leave to speak to Bonaparte: "he had a cause to bring before him;" he was not heard! Who, standing at the edge of the ravelin, looked down into the moat upon those muskets, those soldiers dimly lighted by a lantern in the mist and gloom, as in night everlasting? Where was the light placed? Did the Duc d'Enghien stand over his open grave? Was he obliged to step across it to place himself at the distance of "six paces" specified by the Duc de Rovigo.

There exists a letter written by M. le Duc d'Enghien, at the age of nine, to his father the Duc de Bourbon; he says:

"All the Enguiens [627] are lucky; the one [628] of the Battle of Cerizoles, the one who won the Battle of Rocroi [629]: I hope to be so too."

Is it true that the victim was refused a priest? Is it true that he only with difficulty found a hand willing to convey to a woman a last pledge of affection? What did the executioners care for sentiments of religion or love? They were there to kill, the Duc d'Enghien to die.

The Duc d'Enghien had been secretly married, through the offices of a priest, to the Princesse Charlotte de Rohan [630]: in those days of a roving mother-land, a man, by the very reason of his elevation, was impeded by a thousand political obstacles; to enjoy that which society accords to all, he was obliged to hide himself. This lawful marriage, to-day no more a secret, enhances the splendour of a tragic doom; it substitutes the glory for the clemency of Heaven: religion perpetuates the pomp of misfortune when, after the catastrophe has been accomplished, the cross rises on the deserted spot.

The Duc de Talleyrand.

M. de Talleyrand, according to M. de Rovigo's pamphlet, had presented a vindicatory memorial to Louis XVIII.; this memorial, which I have not seen, should have thrown light upon everything, and threw light upon nothing. In 1820, when I was appointed Minister Plenipotentiary to Berlin, I discovered in the archives of the embassy a letter from "the Citizen Laforest [631]," addressed to "the Citizen Talleyrand," on the subject of the Duc d'Enghien. This strongly-worded letter does its author the more credit in that he did not fear to compromise his career, without earning the reward of public opinion, since the step he had taken was to remain unknown: a noble act of self-denial on the part of a man who, through his very obscurity, had relegated to obscurity the good which he had done.

M. de Talleyrand took his lesson, and kept silence; at least, I found nothing from him in the same archives concerning the death of the Prince. The Minister of Foreign Relations had nevertheless, on the 2 Ventôse, informed the Minister of the Elector of Baden "that the First Consul had thought it necessary to order some detachments to proceed to Offenburg and Ettenheim, there to seize the instigators of the scandalous conspiracies which, by their character, place without the pale of the Law of Nations all those who have manifestly taken part in them."

A passage from Generals Gourgaud [632], Montholon [633], and D. Ward, brings Bonaparte upon the scene:

"My Minister," says the latter, "strongly represented to me the need for seizing the Duc d'Enghien, although he was upon neutral territory. But I continued to hesitate, and the Prince de Bénévent twice brought me the order for his arrest for signature. Nevertheless I consented to sign it only after convincing myself of the urgency of this act."

According to the Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène[634], the following words must have dropped from Bonaparte:

"The Duc d'Enghien bore himself before the tribunal with great gallantry. On his arrival at Strasburg, he wrote me a letter; this letter was handed to Talleyrand, who kept it until the execution."

I have no great belief in this letter: Napoleon probably turned into a letter the request made by the Duc d'Enghien to speak to the conqueror of Italy, or rather the few lines expressing this request which, before signing the examination undergone before the judge-advocate, the Prince had written with his own hand. Nevertheless, the fact that this letter was not to be found should not lead us too vigorously to conclude that it was never written:

"I know," says the Duc de Rovigo, "that in the early days of the Restoration, in 1814, one of M. de Talleyrand's secretaries was incessantly making researches in the archives under the gallery of the Museum. I have this fact from the man who received the order to pass him in. The same thing was done at the repository of the War Office for the documents of the trial of M. le Duc d'Enghien, of which only the sentence remained."

Talleyrand's complicity.

The fact is true; all the diplomatic papers, and notably the correspondence of M. de Talleyrand with the "Emperor" and the "First Consul," were transferred from the archives of the Museum to the house in the Rue Saint-Florentin [635]; part of them were destroyed; the remainder were put into a stove, to which they forgot to set light; this was all that the Minister's prudence could do against the Prince's indifference. The documents that were not burned were recovered; some one thought it was right to preserve them: I have held in my hands and read with my eyes a letter from M. de Talleyrand, dated 8 March 1804, and treating of the arrest, not yet carried out, of M. le Duc d'Enghien. The Minister invites the First Consul to deal vigorously with his enemies. I was not permitted to keep the letter, and I have retained only these two passages in my memory:

"If justice obliges us to punish vigorously, policy exacts that we should punish without exception...... I will suggest to the First Consul M. de Caulaincourt, to whom he might give his orders, and who would execute them with as much discretion as fidelity."

Will this report of the Prince de Talleyrand one day be published in full? I do not know; but what I do know is that it was in existence no more than two years ago.

There was a meeting of the Council for the arrest of the Duc d'Enghien. Cambacérès, in his unpublished Memoirs, declares, and I believe him, that he opposed the arrest; but, while recording what he said, he does not say what the others replied.

For the rest, the Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène denies the entreaties for mercy to which Bonaparte is said to have been exposed. The pretended scene of Joséphine on her knees asking for pardon for the Duc d'Enghien, clinging to the skirt of her husband's coat and allowing that inexorable husband to drag her about, is one of those melodramatic inventions with which our latter-day fabulists compose veracious history. Joséphine did not know, on the evening of the 19th of March, that the Duc d'Enghien was to be judged; she only knew that he had been arrested. She had promised Madame de Rémusat to interest herself in the Prince's fate. As this lady was returning to the Malmaison with Joséphine on the evening of the 19th, it was noticed that the future Empress, instead of being preoccupied solely with the perils of the prisoner of Vincennes, frequently put her head to the window of the carriage to look out at a general riding in her suite: a woman's coquetry had carried elsewhere the thought which might have saved the Duc d'Enghien's life. It was not until the 21st of March that Bonaparte said to his wife:

"The Duc d'Enghien has been shot."

These Memoirs of Madame de Rémusat, whom I have known, contained extremely curious details on the inner life of the imperial Court. The author burnt them during the Hundred Days [636], and afterwards wrote them anew: they are now no more than memories reproduced by memories; their colour has faded; but Bonaparte is throughout exposed to the light and judged with impartiality.

Men attached to Napoleon say that he knew of the death of the Duc d'Enghien only after the Prince's execution: this story would seem to derive some value from the anecdote related by the Duc de Rovigo concerning Réal's going to Vincennes, if the anecdote were true [637]. Once the death had taken place through the intrigues of the revolutionary party, Bonaparte recognised the accomplished fact, so as not to irritate men whom he thought powerful: this ingenious explanation is not admissible.

Bonaparte's responsibility.

Now, to resume these facts, here is what they have proved to me: Bonaparte wished the Duc d'Enghien's death; no one had made that death a condition of his mounting the throne. To suppose this condition is one of the subtleties of the politicians who claim to find occult causes for everything. Nevertheless it is probable that certain compromised persons did not without a certain pleasure see the First Consul sever himself for good from the Bourbons. The Vincennes sentence was an instance of Bonaparte's violent temperament, an outburst of cold anger fed by the reports of his Minister.

M. de Caulaincourt is guilty only of having executed the order for the arrest.

Murat has to reproach himself only with conveying general orders and with not having had the strength to withdraw: he was not at Vincennes during the trial.

The Duc de Rovigo found himself charged with the execution; he probably had secret orders: General Hulin hints as much. What man would have dared to take upon himself to order the execution forthwith of a sentence of death upon the Duc d'Enghien, if he had not acted on an imperative mandate?

As to M. de Talleyrand, priest and nobleman, he inspired and prepared the murder by persistently alarming Bonaparte: he feared the return of the Legitimacy. It would be possible, by collecting what Napoleon said at St. Helena and the letters written by the Bishop of Autun, to prove that the latter took a very great part in the death of the Duc d'Enghien. It would be vain to object that the Minister's light-heartedness, character, and education ought to make him averse to violence, that his corruption ought to take away his energy; it would remain none the less a fact that he persuaded the Consul to the fatal arrest. This arrest of the Duc d'Enghien on the 15th of March was not unknown to M. de Talleyrand: he was in daily communication with Bonaparte and conferred with him; during the interval that elapsed between the arrest and the execution, did M. de Talleyrand, he, the instigating Minister, repent, did he say a single word to the First Consul in favour of the unhappy Prince? It is natural to believe that he applauded the execution of the sentence.

The military commission sentenced the Duc d'Enghien, but with sorrow and repentance.

This, conscientiously, impartially and strictly considered, is the exact part played by each. My fate has been too closely connected with this catastrophe that I should not endeavour to throw light upon its dark places and to lay bare its details. If Bonaparte had not killed the Duc d'Enghien, if he had brought me closer and closer to him (and his inclination prompted him to do so), what would have been the result for me? My literary career would have been ended; I should at one jump have entered the political career, in which I have proved what I could have done by the Spanish War; and I should have become rich and powerful. France might have been the gainer by my association with the Emperor; I should have been the loser. Possibly I might have succeeded in maintaining some ideas of liberty and moderation in the great man's head; but my life, ranking among those which are called happy, would have been deprived of that which has constituted its character and its honour: poverty, strife and independence.

Lastly, the principal accused rises after all the others; he brings up the rear of the blood-stained penitents. Suppose that a judge were to have brought up before him "the man named Bonaparte," as the captain-judge-advocate had brought up before him "the man named d'Enghien;" suppose that the minutes of the later examination copied upon the former had been preserved to us; compare and read:

Asked: His surname and Christian names?

Answered: That his name was Napoleon Bonaparte.

Asked: Where he had resided since he had left France?

Answered: At the Pyramids, in Berlin, Madrid, Vienna, Moscow, St Helena.

Asked: What rank he filled in the army?

Answered: Commander in the advance-guard of the armies of God. No other reply issues from the prisoner's lips.

Bonaparte defended.

The different actors in the tragedy mutually accused each other: Bonaparte alone throws the blame for it upon nobody; he preserves his greatness beneath the weight of malediction; he does not bow his head but stands erect; he exclaims with the stoic, "Pain, I will never admit that thou art an evil!" But that which, in his pride, he refuses to admit to the living he is constrained to confess to the dead. This Prometheus, with the vulture at his breast, who stole the fire from heaven, thought himself superior to all things, and he is compelled to reply to the Duc d'Enghien, whom he has made into dust before his time: the skeleton, the trophy over which he stumbled, questions him and dominates him by a providential dispensation.

Personal attendance and the army, the ante-room and the tent had their representatives at St. Helena: a servant, estimable for his fidelity to the master he had chosen, had come to place himself near Napoleon as an echo at his service. Simplicity repeated the fable, while giving it an accent of sincerity. Bonaparte was "Destiny;" like the latter, he deceived men's fascinated minds in outward form, but at the bottom of his impostures this inexorable truth was heard to resound: "I am!" And the universe felt its weight.

The author of the most credited work on St. Helena sets forth the theory which Napoleon invented for the murderer's benefit; the voluntary exile accepts as Gospel truth an homicidal talk, with pretensions to profundity, which would only explain Napoleon's life as he wished to arrange it, and as he contended that it should be written. He left instructions for his neophytes: M. le Comte de Las Cases [638] learnt his lesson without being aware of it; the stupendous captive, wandering along solitary paths, drew his credulous worshipper after him by means of lies, even as Hercules hung men to his mouth by chains of gold.

"The first time," says the honest chamberlain, "that I heard Napoleon pronounce the name of the Duc d'Enghien, I turned red with embarrassment. Fortunately I was walking behind him in a narrow path; otherwise, he would certainly have observed my confusion. Nevertheless, when the Emperor for the first time developed the whole of this incident, with all its details and accessories; when he set forth his various motives with his close, luminous, persuasive reasoning, I must confess that the matter seemed to me gradually to assume a new aspect.... The Emperor often resumed this subject, which gave me an opportunity of observing in him certain very pronounced shades of character. I was able on this occasion, and repeatedly, most distinctly to see in him the private individual struggling with the public man, and the natural sentiments of his heart contending against those of his pride and of the dignity of his position. In the confidence of intimacy, he did not show himself indifferent to the unfortunate Prince's fate; but so soon as it became a question of the public, it was quite a different thing. One day, after talking with me of the untimely end and of the youth of this ill-fated man, he concluded by saying:

"'And I have since learnt, my dear fellow, that he was rather in my favour; I have been told that he spoke of me with some admiration; such is retributive justice here below!'

"And the last words were spoken with so much feeling, all the features of his face displayed such harmony with the words that, if he whom Napoleon was pitying had at that moment been in his power, I am quite sure that, whatever his intentions or his acts, he would have been eagerly pardoned.... The Emperor used to consider this matter from two very different points of view: that of common law, or the established rules of justice, and that of the law of nature, or acts of violence...."

By the Comte de Las Cases.

"To us, in the intimacy of private conversation, the Emperor would say that the blame in France might be ascribed to an excess of zeal in those around him, or to private objects or mysterious intrigues. He said that he had been precipitately urged in this affair; that they had as it were taken his mind unawares, hastened his measures, anticipated their result....

"'Without doubt,' he said, 'if I had been informed in time of certain particulars concerning the Prince's opinions and disposition; more still, if I had seen the letter which he wrote to me and which, God knows for what reason, was not handed to me until after he was no more, I should most certainly have pardoned him.'

"It was easy for us to see that it was the Emperor's heart and nature alone which dictated these words, and that they were intended only for us; for he would have felt humiliated to think that any one could for an instant believe that he was trying to shift the burden from his own shoulders, or condescending to justify himself; his fear in this respect, or his susceptibility, was such that, in speaking of it to strangers, or dictating on this matter for the public, he confined himself to saying that, if he had known of the Prince's letter, he would perhaps have pardoned him, in view of the great political advantages which he could have derived from it; and when, writing with his own hand his last thoughts, which he concludes will be recorded in the present age and reach posterity, he states, with reference to this subject, which he regards as one of the most delicate for his memory, that, if it were to be done over again, he would do it again."

This passage, in so far as the writer is concerned, possesses all the characteristics of the most perfect sincerity; this shines through to the very phrase in which M. le Comte de Las Cases declared that Bonaparte would have eagerly pardoned a man who was not guilty. But the theories of the master are subtleties by aid of which an effort is made to reconcile the irreconcilable. In making the distinction between "common law or established justice, and natural law or the errors of violence," Napoleon seemed to be content with a piece of sophistry which in reality did not content him! He was unable to subject his conscience as he had subjected the world. A weakness natural to superior men and to little men, when they have committed a fault, is to wish to represent it as a work of genius, a vast combination beyond the understanding of the vulgar. Pride says those things, and folly believes them. Bonaparte doubtless regarded as the mark of the ruling mind the sentence which he delivered in his great man's compunction: "My dear fellow, such is retributive justice here below!" O truly philosophical emotion! What impartiality! How well it justifies, by laying it to the charge of destiny, the evil which has sprung from ourselves! A man nowadays thinks it an all-sufficient excuse to exclaim, "After all, it was my nature, it was the infirmity of mankind." When he has killed his father he repeats, "I am made like that!" And the crowd stands open-mouthed, and they examine the mighty man's bumps, and they recognise that he was "made like that." And what care I that you are made like that! Must I submit to this manner of being? The world would be a fine chaos if all the men who are "made like that" were to take it into their heads to force themselves one upon the other. Those who are unable to wipe out their errors deify them: they make a dogma of their evil-doing, they turn acts of sacrilege into religion, and they would think themselves apostates were they to renounce the cult of their iniquities.

There is a serious lesson to be drawn from Bonaparte's life. Two actions, both bad, began and caused his fall: the death of the Duc d'Enghien and the war with Spain. It was vain for him to ride over them with his glory: they remained there to ruin him. He perished on the very side in which he thought himself strong, profound, invincible, when he violated the moral law while neglecting and scorning his real strength, that is, his superior qualities of order and equity. So long as he confined himself to attacking anarchy and foreigners hostile to France, he was victorious; he found himself robbed of his vigour so soon as he entered upon the paths of corruption: the shaving of the locks by Delilah is nothing other than the loss of virtue. Every crime bears within itself a radical incapacity and a germ of misfortune: let us then practise good to be happy, and let us be just to be able.

In proof of this truth, observe that, at the very moment of the Prince's death, commenced the dissent which, growing in proportion to ill-fortune, decided the fall of the ordainer of the tragedy of Vincennes. The Russian Cabinet, in reference to the arrest of the Duc d'Enghien, addressed vigorous representantions against the violation of the territory of the Empire: Bonaparte felt the blow, and replied in the Moniteur with a fulminating article bringing up the death of Paul I [639]. A funeral service had been celebrated in St. Petersburg for young Condé. On the cenotaph was read:

"To the Duc d'Enghien quem devoravit bellua Corsica."

The two mighty adversaries subsequently became reconciled in appearance; but the mutual wound which policy had inflicted and insult-enlarged remained in their hearts. Napoleon did not think himself revenged until he came to sleep in Moscow; Alexander [640] was not satisfied before he entered Paris.

European indignation.

The hatred of the Cabinet of Berlin arose from the same origin: I have spoken of the noble letter of M. de Laforest, in which he told M. de Talleyrand of the effect which the murder of the Duc d'Enghien had produced at the Court of Potsdam. Madame de Staël was in Prussia when the news from Vincennes arrived:

"I was living in Berlin," he said, "on the Spree Quay, and my apartment was on the ground floor. At eight o'clock one morning, they woke me to tell me that Prince Louis Ferdinand [641] was under my windows on horse-back, and asked me to come and speak to him....

"'Do you know,' he asked, 'that the Duc d'Enghien has been kidnapped on Baden territory, handed over to a military commission, and shot within four-and-twenty hours after his arrival in Paris?'

"'What nonsense!' I replied. 'Do you not see that this can only be a rumour spread by the enemies of France?'

"In fact, I admit that my hatred of Bonaparte, strong as it was, did not go so far as to make me credit the possibility of his committing so great a crime.

"'As you doubt what I tell you,' replied Prince Louis, 'I will send you the Moniteur, in which you can read the sentence.'

"With these words he left me, and the expression of his face was the presage of vengeance or death. A quarter of an hour later, I had in my hands the Moniteur of the 21st of March (30 Pluviôse), which contained a sentence of death passed by the military commission, sitting at Vincennes, upon 'the man called Louis d'Enghien!' It was thus that Frenchmen described the descendant of heroes who were the glory of their country! Even if one were to abjure all the prejudices in favour of illustrious birth which the return of monarchical forms would necessarily recall, was it possible thus to blaspheme the memories of the Battle of Lens [642] and of Rocroi? This Bonaparte, who has won so many battles, does not even know how to respect them; for him there is neither past nor future; his imperious and scornful soul will recognise nothing for opinion to hold sacred; he admits only respect for the force in power. Prince Louis wrote to me, beginning his note with these words: 'The man called Louis of Prussia begs Madame de Staël,' etc. He felt the insult offered to the Blood Royal whence he sprang, to the memory of the heroes among whom he was longing to enroll himself. How, after this horrible deed, could a single king in Europe ally himself with such a man? Necessity, you will say. There is a sanctuary in the soul to which its empire may not penetrate; were this not so, what would virtue be upon this earth? A liberal amusement, suited only to the peaceful leisure of private men [643]."

This resentment on the part of the Prince, for which he was to pay with his life, was still lasting when the Prussian Campaign opened in 1806. Frederic William, in his manifesto of the 9th of October, said:

"The Germans have not revenged the death of the Duc d'Enghien; but the memory of that crime will never fade among them."

These historical particulars, rarely observed, deserved to be so; for they explain enmities of which one would be puzzled to discover the primary cause elsewhere, and at the same time they disclose the steps by which Providence leads a man's destiny from the crime to the expiation.

Happy, at least, my life, which was not troubled by fear, nor attacked by contagion, nor carried away by examples! The satisfaction which I experience to-day at what I did then is my warrant that my conscience is no illusion. More content than all those potentates, than all those nations fallen at the feet of the glorious soldier, I turn again with pardonable pride to this page, which I have retained as my only belonging and which I owe only to myself. In 1807, with my heart still moved by the murder which I have just related, I wrote the following lines; they caused the Mercure to be suppressed, and jeopardized my liberty once more:

I utter my protest.

"When, amid the silence of abjection, no sound is heard save that of the chains of the slave and the voice of the informer; when all tremble before the tyrant, and when it is as dangerous to incur his favour as to deserve his displeasure, the historian appears, entrusted with the vengeance of the nations. Nero prospers in vain, Tacitus already is born within the Empire; he grows up unknown beside the ashes of Germanicus, and already a just Providence has surrendered to an obscure child the glory of the master of the world. If the historian's part is fine, it is often dangerous; but there are altars such as that of honour which, although deserted, demand further sacrifices: the god is not annihilated because the temple is empty. Wherever there remains a chance for fortune, there is no heroism in trying it; magnanimous actions are those of which adversity and death are the foreseen result After all, what do reverses matter, if our name, pronounced by posterity, makes one generous heart beat two thousand years after our life [644]?"

The death of the Duc d'Enghien, by introducing a new principle into Bonaparte's conduct, marred the correctness of his intelligence: he was obliged to adopt as a shield maxims of which he had not the whole force at his disposal, for his glory and his genius incessantly blunted them. He was looked upon with suspicion, with fear; men lost confidence in him and in his destiny; he was constrained to see, if not to seek out, men whom he would never have seen, and who, through his action, considered themselves to have become his equals: the contagion of their defilement was overtaking him. His great qualities remained the same, but his good dispositions became impaired and no longer upheld his great qualities: under the influence of the corruption of that original stain his nature deteriorated. God commanded his angels to disturb the harmonies of that world, to change its laws, to tilt it on its poles. As Milton says:

They with labour push'd
Oblique the centric Globe: some say, the Sun
Was bid turn reins from th' equinoctial road
Like distant breadth. . . . .
. . . . . . . .
Boreas and Cæcias and Argestes loud
And Thrascias rend the woods, and seas upturn [645].

Will the ashes of Bonaparte be exhumed, as were those of the Duc d'Enghien? If I had been the master, the latter victim would still be sleeping unhonoured in the moat of Vincennes Castle. That "excommunicated one" would have been left, like Raymond of Toulouse, in an open coffin; no man's hand would have dared to conceal beneath a plank the sight of the witness to the incomprehensible judgments and angers of God. The abandoned skeleton of the Duc d'Enghien and Napoleon's deserted tomb at St Helena would be the counterpart of each other: there would be nothing more commemorative than those remains, face to face, at opposite ends of the earth.

At least the Duc d'Enghien did not remain on foreign soil, like the exiled of kings: the latter took care to restore the former to his country, a little harshly, it is true; but will it be for ever? France (how much dust winnowed by the breath of the Revolution bears witness to it) is not faithful to the bones of the dead. Old Condé, in his will, declares "that he is not sure which country he will be inhabiting on the day of his death." O Bossuet, what would you not have added to the masterpiece of your eloquence, if, when you were speaking over the grave of the Great Condé, you had been able to foresee the future!

It was at this very spot, at Chantilly, that the Duc d'Enghien was born: "Louis Antoine Henri de Bourbon, born 2 August 1772, at Chantilly," says the sentence of death. It was on this lawn that he played in childhood; the traces of his footsteps have become obliterated. And the victor of Friburg, of Nördlingen, of Lens, of Senef, where has he gone with his "victorious and now feeble hands"? And his descendants, the Condé of Johannisberg and of Bentheim [646], and his son, and his grandson, where are they? That castle, those gardens, those fountains "which were silent neither by day nor by night:" what has become of them? Mutilated statues, lions with a claw or a jaw restored; trophies of arms sculptured in a crumbling wall; escutcheons with obliterated fleurs-de-lis; foundations of razed turrets; a few marble coursers above the empty stables no longer livened by the neighing of the steed of Rocroi; near a riding-school, a high unfinished gate: that is what remains of the memories of an heroic race; a will tied with a rope changed the owners of the inheritance [647].

The whole forest has repeatedly fallen under the axe. Persons of bygone times have run over those once resounding chases, mute to-day. What was their age, what their passions, when they stopped at the foot of those oaks? O my useless Memoirs, I should not now be able to say to you:

Qu'à Chantilly Condé vous lise quelquefois;
Qu'Enghien en soit touché![648]

Obscure men that we are, what are we beside those famous men? We shall disappear never to return; you, sweet William, who lie upon my table beside this paper, whose belated little flower I have gathered among the heather will blossom again; but we, we shall not come to life again with the perfumed solitary which has diverted my thoughts.

[594] This book was written at Chantilly in November 1838.—T.

[595] Blanche of Castile, Queen of France (1187-1252), daughter of Alphonsus IX. King of Castile, wife of Louis VIII. King of France, and mother of St. Louis IX. A hunting-lodge, at Chantilly, stands on the site of the old Castle of Queen Blanche, near the Commelle Ponds.—T.

[596] Charles IV. King of Spain (1748-1819). On the 18th of March 1808, forced by the revolt of Aranjuez, he abdicated in favour of his son Ferdinand. Napoleon compelled him to withdraw this abdication and to make a fresh one in favour of himself (5 May 1808), after which Napoleon's brother Joseph was placed on the throne of Spain. Charles IV. was sent to Compiègne and Marseilles, and died in Rome in 1819. On the fall of Joseph, in 1813, Charles's son Ferdinand VII. ascended the throne.—T.

[597] Gustavus IV. (1778-1837) was the last Legitimist King of Sweden. A revolt of the nobles in 1809 compelled him to abdicate, and his uncle, the Duke of Sudermania, was proclaimed King with the title of Charles XIII., ultimately adopting General Bernadotte as his heir. Gustavus spent the remaining years of his life in Germany, Holland, and Switzerland, under the names of Count of Holstein-Gottorp and Colonel Gustawson. He died at Saint-Gall in 1837.—T.

[598] Frederic William III. King of Prussia (1770-1840), son of Frederic William II. and grand-nephew to Frederic the Great. He was married to the beautiful Queen Louisa, daughter of the Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.—T.

[599] Bonaparte had the Black Eagle.—Authors Note.

[600] Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus Nero, later Nero Claudius Cæsar Drusus Germanicus, Roman Emperor (37-68), son of Domitius Ahenobarbus and Agrippina, by whose uncle and third husband, the Emperor Claudius, he was adopted, succeeding him, to the exclusion of the natural heir, Britannicus, in 54.—T.

[601] Lucius Annæus Seneca (3-65), the Stoic philosopher, was Nero's tutor and principal minister. He is accused, not only of writing the apology for the murder of Agrippina, but of approving the poisoning of Britannicus in 55.—T.

[602] Julia Agrippina (circa 15-59 or 60), daughter of the Emperor Germanicus and of Agrippina, grand-daughter of Augustus. She poisoned Claudius to secure the Empire for Nero, her son by her first husband, and was herself murdered by Nero's orders in 59.—T.

[603] The Duc de Bourbon was the Due d'Enghien's father, not his grandfather. The grandfather was the Prince de Condé, the writer of the letter in question. Chateaubriand's mistake is due to a slip of the pen, which we occasionally find in more than one other historian of the period.—B.

[604] Pierre François Comte Réal (1765-1834) was an attorney at the Châtelet at the outbreak of the Revolution. He attached himself to Danton and became Public Accuser and Solicitor to the Commune of Paris. He was imprisoned by Robespierre and released on the 9 Thermidor. Bonaparte made him a State Councillor and appointed him a deputy at the Ministry of Police. In 1804 Réal discovered the conspiracy of Georges Cadoudal. He was made Prefect of Police during the Hundred Days, and was exiled under the Second Restoration. He returned to Paris in 1818.—T.

[605] Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès (1753-1824), an eminent jurist and a moderate revolutionary, who voted for the reprieve at the trial of Louis XVI. He was Minister of Justice under the Directory. Bonaparte chose him as Second Consul in 1799, with Lebrun as Third Consul. When Napoleon became Emperor he appointed Cambacérès Arch-chancellor and created him a Prince of the Empire and Duke of Parma. Cambacérès is responsible for the greater portion of the Code civil. He was exiled by the Bourbons and recalled in 1818.—T.

[606] In the morning.—Author's Note.

[607] Madame Joséphine Bonaparte (1763-1814), née Tascher de La Pagerie, and widow of Alexandre Vicomte de Beauharnais, who was guillotined in 1794. She married Bonaparte in 1796, was crowned Empress in 1804, and was divorced in 1809.—T.

[608] Anne Jean Marie René Savary, Duc de Rovigo (1774-1833), was in 1804 Colonel of the Gendarmerie d'Élite, in which capacity he was charged with the execution of the sentence on the Duc d'Enghien. At the battle of Marengo (14 June 1800) he was aide-de-camp to General Desaix, and was by his side when that general was shot through the heart. He became a general of brigade in 1803, a general of division in 1805, a duke in 1808, and succeeded Fouché as Minister of Police in 1810. He followed the Emperor on to the Bellérophon in 1815, but was separated from him and kept a prisoner for seven months in Malta, where he drew up the plan of his Memoirs (published in 1828). On the Restoration, he was sentenced to death in his absence. He returned to France in 1819 in order to obtain the quashing of the sentence. A pamphlet which he subsequently wrote upon the death of the Duc d'Enghien, accusing Talleyrand of complicity, brought about his disgrace, and he was obliged to retire to Rome. He returned once more to France after the Revolution of 1830, and in 1831 received from Louis-Philippe the command-in-chief of the Army of Algiers, which he retained till his death in 1833.—T.

[609] Claire Élisabeth Jeanne Comtesse de Rémusat (1780-1821), née Gravier de Vergennes, wife of the Comte de Rémusat, Chamberlain to Napoleon and Superintendent of Theatres, and lady-in-waiting to the Empress Joséphine. She was the author of an Essai sur l'éducation des femmes (1823) and of some excellent Memoirs (1880).—T.

[610] Cf. Corneille, Cinna, Act II. Sc. I.—T.

[611] Cf. Mémoires de Madame de Rémusat, vol. I.—B.

[612] 20 March 1804.—B.

[613] Murat.—Author's Note.

[614] Lieutenant-General Pierre Auguste Comte Hulin (1758-1841) was one of the foremost among the conquerors of the Bastille on the 14th of July 1789, and at the end of the same year was made Commander of the National Guard of Paris. He accompanied Bonaparte to Italy as Adjutant-General, was appointed Commander of Milan in 1797 and 1798, and in 1803 became a general of division and Commander of the Consular Guard. He took part in the several German campaigns, and was selected for the command of the places around Vienna and of Berlin (1806). He was at the head of the armed forces in Paris when the Malet conspiracy broke out in 1812, and caused the plot to fail, having his lower jaw shattered by Malet with a pistol-shot. Hulin lost the command of the City of Paris on the return of the Bourbons, and was obliged to leave France in 1816. He returned in 1819, and ended his days in retirement.—T.

[615] Marie Louise Empress of the French (1791-1847), daughter of Francis I. Emperor of Austria, and married to Napoleon in 1810. She left him after his first abdication, protested against his restoration and, in reward for her docility, received the Duchy of Parma at the hands of the Congress of Vienna. There she spent the remainder of her days, living with the Count von Niepperg, whom she married morganatically after Napoleon's death.—T.

[616] Francis Charles Joseph Napoleon Duke of Reichstadt (1811-1832), son of Napoleon and Marie Louise, was proclaimed King of Rome at his birth. On his father's abdication there was an idea of proclaiming him Emperor, as Napoleon II.; but this was speedily abandoned and he was brought up at the Court of his maternal grandfather, who in 1818 gave him the title of Duke of Reichstadt, together with a regiment of cavalry.—T.

[617] André Marie Jean Jacques Dupin (1783-1865), known as Dupin the Elder, was a deputy from 1827 to 1848, a member of the Constituent Assembly of 1848 and of the Legislative Assembly of 1849, a senator of the Second Empire (1857), and Attorney-General to the Court of Appeal from 1830 to 1852. He resigned the latter post in order to dissociate himself from the decrees confiscating the possessions of the Orleans Family; but resumed it five years later when summoned to the Imperial Senate. He had been a member of the French Academy since 1832. The pamphlet to which Chateaubriand refers was published in 1823, and entitled, Pièces judiciaires et historiques relatives au procès du duc dEnghien, avec le Journal de ce prince depuis l'instant de son arrestation; précédées de la Discussion des actes de la commission militaire instituée en l'an XII, par le gouvernement consulaire, pour juger le duc d'Enghien, par l'auteur de l'opuscule intitulé: "De la Libre Défense des accusés."—B.

[618] An allusion to the abominable reply said to have been made to M. le Duc d'Enghien.—Author's Note.

The Duke is reported to have cried, "Shoot straight, my friends," to the soldiers about to fire their volley.

"You have no friends here," replied the officer in command!—T.

[619] General Claude François de Malet (1754-1812) played a distinguished part in the campaigns of the Revolution, became a general of brigade in 1799, and was appointed Governor of Pavia by Masséna in 1805. His republicanism, however, made him suspect in the eyes of Napoleon, who had him imprisoned in Paris in 1808. Availing himself of the facilities awarded him by his transfer to a mad-house, he organized a conspiracy against the Empire, involving Generals Guidal and Lahorie in the plot. He escaped from prison on the night of the 23rd of October 1812, rapidly visited the Paris barracks, spreading the news of Napoleon's death, and was on the point of succeeding, when the resistance of General Hulin, who was at the head of the Staff, caused the whole plot to fail. Malet was brought before a military commission and shot on the 29th of October 1812.—T

[620] General Hulin's pamphlet, published in 1823, is entitled, Explications offertes aux hommes impartiaux par M. le Comte Hulin, au sujet de la Commission militaire institute en l'an XII pour juger le duc d'Enghien.—B.

[621] Jacques Harel (b. 1755) had received the command of Vincennes Castle in 1800 as his reward for his services in betraying his fellow-conspirators in a plot to kill the First Consul. The story is told at length in the Memoirs of M. de Bourrienne.—B.

[622] Freiburg-in-Breisgau (Baden), where the great Condé defeated the Imperial forces in 1644.—T.

[623] Savary's pamphlet appeared in the same year as General Hulin's and M. Dupin's, and was entitled, Extrait des Mémoires du duc de Rovigo, concernant le catastrophe de M. le duc d'Enghien.—B.

[624] Armand Augustin Louis Marquis de Caulaincourt, Duc de Vicence (1773-1827), had in his youth been a page to the Prince de Condé. He took part in nearly all the wars of the Revolution, and was made Master of the Horse by Napoleon when the latter assumed the imperial crown, a general of division, a duke (1805), and Ambassador to Russia (1807). In 1813, he became Foreign Minister, and represented France at the Congress of Châtillon in 1814.—T.

[625] Achille Roche (1801-1834), a publicist and secretary to Benjamin Constant. The work from which Chateaubriand quotes is a pamphlet entitled, De Messieurs le duc de Rovigo et le prince de Talleyrand.—B.

[626] Joinville, Memoirs of Louis IX., King of France, Part I.—T.

[627] Misspelt as printed: Enguiens for Enghien, proper names not taking the plural in French.—T.

[628] François de Bourbon-Vendôme, Comte d'Enghien (1519-1545), brother of Anthony de Bourbon, King of Navarre, defeated the Imperial forces at Cérisoles in 1544—T.

[629] The Great Condé was Duc d'Enghien when he defeated the Spaniards at Rocroi in 1643.—T.

[630] The Princesse Charlotte de Rohan-Rochefort. The Prince de Condé refused to acknowledge the marriage, although he himself had married a Rohan. After the death of the Duc d'Enghien, the Duc de Bourbon tardily offered to acknowledge his son's marriage, but the Princess refused the offer. Nevertheless she visited the Duchesse de Bourbon in the early days of the Restoration, when the latter addressed her as "my daughter" (Cf. Muret, Histoire de l'armée de Condé). The Duchess of Madrid (de jure Queen of Spain and France), née Princesse Marie Berthe de Rohan, and married to the Duke of Madrid in 1894, is a member of the same (Rochefort) branch of the Rohan family. Their motto is, Roi ne puis, prince ne daigne, Rohan suis.—T.

[631] Antoine René Charles Mathurin Comte de Laforest (1756-1846) entered the diplomatic service under Louis XVI. He was Consul-General in the United States, Secretary of Legation to Joseph Bonaparte at the Congress of Lunéville, and Chargé-d'affaires Extraordinary at Munich and Ratisbon. He was Ambassador in Berlin from 1805 to 1808, and in Madrid from 1808 to 1813. Napoleon created him a count in 1808. On the fall of the Empire, in 1814, he directed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for six weeks ad interim, and was charged by the King to prepare the Treaty of Paris. Under the Second Restoration, he was sent as Minister Plenipotentiary to various Powers. He was made a peer of France in 1819, and a minister of State and privy councillor in 1825. He lost his places and dignities at the Revolution of 1830.—B.

[632] Gaspard Baron Gourgaud (1783-1852), a distinguished artillery officer who had twice saved Napoleon's life, at Moscow and Brienne. He accompanied Napoleon to St. Helena, where he remained until 1817, and where he wrote the Campagne de 1815, published in 1818, which was the cause of his being struck off the roll of the French army by Louis XVIII. Louis-Philippe reinstated him and made him his aide-de-camp, and in 1840 he accompanied the Prince de Joinville to St. Helena to bring back the remains of Napoleon. On his return, he was raised to the peerage. Gourgaud is part-author, together with Montholon, of the Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de France sous Napoléon (1823-1825), from which the above quotation is taken.—T.

[633] Charles Tristan Comte de Montholon (1782-1853), Gourgaud's collaborator, was one of Napoleon's bravest and most reckless officers. He too accompanied Napoleon to St Helena, remained with him to the day of his death, and was one of his executors and the depositary of his manuscripts, which were subsequently published in eight volumes under the title given in the preceding note. In 1840, Montholon took part in Louis Napoleon's futile descent at Boulogne, and suffered a short confinement.—T.

[634] Las Cases, Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène (8 volumes, 1822-1824).—T.

[635] Talleyrand's residence.—T.

[636] Lest they should compromise her friends. See M. Paul de Rémusat's Preface to the Memoirs.—T.

[637] This is the anecdote:

"After the execution of the sentence," says the Duc de Rovigo, "I took the road back to Paris. I was approaching the barriers, when I met M. Réal going to Vincennes in the dress of a councillor of State. I stopped him to ask him where he was going:

"'To Vincennes,' he replied; 'I received orders yesterday to repair there to examine the Duc d'Enghien.'

"I told him what had just happened, and he appeared as much astonished at what I had told him as I at what he had told me. I began to ponder. My meeting with the Minister of Foreign Relations at General Murat's recurred to my mind, and I began to doubt whether the death of the Duc d'Enghien was the work of the First Consul."—B.

[638] Emmanuel Augustin Dieudonné Comte de Las Cases (1766-1842) was a lieutenant in the navy when he emigrated in 1789 and joined Condé's Army. He returned to France after the 18 Brumaire, and devoted himself for several years to literary work, until in 1809 he enlisted as a volunteer to assist in repelling the English, who were threatening a descent upon Flushing. He attracted the notice of Napoleon, who made him one of his chamberlains, and he was one of the four men who followed Napoleon into exile. He remained eighteen months at St. Helena, gathering the talk that fell from Napoleon's lips into his famous Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène; but losing favour with Sir Hudson Lowe, he was removed from Napoleon's service, taken to the Cape of Good Hope, and thence to Europe, where he was kept for some time in confinement. Las Cases was not allowed to return to France until after the Emperor's death. In 1830 he was returned for the Seine to the Chamber of Deputies, where he sat in the Opposition.—T.

[639] Paul I. Emperor of Russia (1754-1801), son of Catherine II. and Peter III. On the death of Catherine in 1796, he placed himself at the head of the second coalition against France; but in 1799, suddenly smitten with a passionate admiration for Bonaparte, he contracted an alliance with him, and paved the way for the treaties of Lunéville and Amiens. He was strangled by some of his nobles on the 23rd of March 1801.—T.

[640] Alexander I. Emperor of Russia (1777-1825), was at war with Napoleon from 1805 to 1807, and in alliance with him from 1807 to 1812, when war broke out anew. The retreat from Moscow took place in the latter year, and Alexander entered Paris at the head of the allied forces on the 31st of March 1814.—T.

[641] Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia (1772-1806), son of Prince Ferdinand, brother to Frederic the Great, was killed in 1806 at the Battle of Saalfeld.—T.

[642] The Great Condé defeated the Imperial forces at Lens in 1648.—T.

[643] Madame de Staël, Dix années d'exil.—B.

[644] These lines are taken from the article, published by Chateaubriand in the Mercure of 4 July 1807, on M. Alexandre de Laborde's Voyage pittoresque et historique en Espagne.—B.

[645] Milton, Paradise Lost, X., 670-673, 698-699.—T.

[646] The Prince de Condé co-operated with the Prince de Soubise in winning the Battle of Johannisberg, during the Seven Years' War, in 1762, and performed prodigies of valour to no purpose at Bentheim in 1799.—T.

[647] The Duc de Bourbon was found hanged or strangled in his apartment a few days after the Revolution of 1830. He left Chantilly and the greater part of his fortune to the late Duc d'Aumale, fourth son of Louis Philippe.—T.

[648] Boileau, Ep. vii. A.M. Racine:

"May Condé sometimes at Chantilly read you;
And may Enghien be touched."—T.

[BOOK IV][649]

The year 1804—I move to the Rue de Miromesnil-Verneuil—Alexis de Tocqueville—Le Ménil—Mézy—Mérévil—Madame de Coislin—Journey to Vichy, in Auvergne, and to Mont Blanc—Return to Lyons—Excursion to the Grande Chartreuse—Death of Madame de Caud—The years 1805 and 1806—I return to Paris—I leave for the Levant—I embark in Constantinople on a ship carrying pilgrims for Syria—From Tunis to my return to France through Spain—Reflections on my voyage—Death of Julien.

Henceforth removed from active life, and nevertheless saved from Bonaparte's anger by the protection of Madame Bacciochi, I left my temporary lodging in the Rue de Beaune and went to live in the Rue de Miromesnil. The little house which I hired was occupied later by M. De Lally-Tolendal and Madame Denain, his "best-beloved," as they said in the days of Diane de Poitiers [650]. My garden abutted on a timber-yard, and near my window I had a tall poplar-tree, which M. de Lally-Tolendal, in order to breathe a less moist air, himself felled with his coarse hand, which to his eyes was transparent and fleshless: it was an illusion like any other. The pavement of the street at that time came to an end before my door; higher up, the street or road wound across a piece of waste-land called the Butte-aux-Lapins, or Rabbit Hill. The Butte-aux-Lapins, sprinkled with a few isolated houses, joined on the right the Jardin de Tivoli, whence I had set out with my brother for the emigration, and on the left the Parc de Monceaux. I strolled pretty often in that abandoned park, where the Revolution had commenced among the orgies of the Duc d'Orléans: this retreat had been embellished with marble nudities and mock ruins, a symbol of the light and vicious policy which was about to cover France with prostitutes and wreckage.

I busied myself with nothing: at the utmost I conversed in the park with some pine-trees, or talked of the Duc d'Enghien with three rooks at the edge of an artificial river hidden beneath a carpet of green moss. Deprived of my Alpine Legation and of my Roman friendships, even as I had been suddenly separated from my attachments in London, I did not know how to dispose of my imagination and my feelings; I sent them every evening after the sun, and its rays were unable to carry them over the seas. I returned indoors and tried to fall asleep to the sound of my poplar tree.

Nevertheless my resignation had increased my reputation; in France a little courage always looks well. Some of the members of Madame de Beaumont's former company introduced me to new country-houses.

The Tocqueville family.

M. de Tocqueville [651], my brother's brother-in-law, and guardian of my two orphaned nephews, occupied Madame de Senozan's [652] country-seat [653]. On every hand were scaffold legacies. There I saw my nephews grow up with their three Tocqueville cousins, among whom Alexis [654], the author of the Démocratie en Amérique, was prominent. He was more spoilt at Verneuil than I had been at Combourg. Is this the last renown that I shall have seen unknown in its swaddling clothes? Alexis de Tocqueville has travelled through the civilized America, of which I have travelled through the forests.

Verneuil has changed masters; it has become the property of Madame de Saint-Fargeau, famous through her father [655] and through the Revolution, which adopted her as its daughter.

Near Mantes, at the Ménil [656], was Madame de Rosanbo: my nephew, Louis de Chateaubriand, eventually married Mademoiselle d'Orglandes there, niece to Madame de Rosanbo; the latter no longer airs her beauty around the pond and under the beeches of the manor: it has passed. When I went from Verneuil to the Ménil, I came to Mézy [657] on the road: Madame de Mézy was romance wrapped up in virtue and maternal grief. If only her child, which fell from a window and broke its head, had been able, like the young quails which we shot, to fly over the château and take refuge in the Île-Belle, the smiling island of the Seine: Coturnix per stipulas pascens!

On the other side of the Seine, not far from the Marais, Madame de Vintimille had introduced me to Méréville [658]. Méréville was an oasis created by the smile of a muse, but of one of those muses whom the Gallic poets call "the learned fairies." Here the adventures of Blanca [659] and of Velléda were read before fashionable generations which, falling one from the other like flowers, to-day listen to the wailing of my years.

By degrees my brain, wearying of rest in my Rue de Miromesnil, saw phantoms form before it in the distance. The Génie du Christianisme inspired me with the idea of proving that work by mixing Christian and mythological characters together. A shade which long afterwards I called Cymodocée sketched itself vaguely in my head; not one of its features was fixed. Cymodocée once conceived, I shut myself up with her, as I always do with the daughters of my imagination; but, before they have issued from the dreamy state and arrived from the banks of Lethe through the ivory portals, they often change their shape. If I create them through love, I undo them through love, and the one cherished object which I, later, present to the light is the offspring of a thousand infidelities.

I remained only a year in the Rue de Miromesnil, because the house was sold. I arranged with Madame la Marquise de Coislin [660], who let me the top floor of her house on the Place Louis XV [661].

The Marquise de Coislin.

Madame de Coislin was a woman of the grandest air. She was nearly eighty years of age, and her proud and domineering eyes bore an expression of wit and irony. Madame de Coislin was in no way lettered, and took pride in the fact; she had passed through the Voltairean age without being aware of it; if she had conceived any idea of it whatever, it was that of a time of a voluble middle-class. Not that she ever spoke of her birth; she was too great to make herself ridiculous: she very well knew how to see "small people" without compromising her rank; but, after all, she was born of the Premier Marquis of France [662]. If she was descended from Drogon de Nesle, killed in Palestine in 1096; from Raoul de Nesle [663], the Constable, knighted by Louis IX.; from Jean II. de Nesle, Regent of France during the last crusade of St. Louis, Madame de Coislin vowed that this was a stupidity on the part of fate for which she ought not to be held responsible; she was naturally of the Court, as others, more happy, are of the streets, as one may be a thorough-bred mare or a cab-hack: she could not help this accident, and had no choice but to endure the ill with which Heaven had been pleased to afflict her.

Had Madame de Coislin had relations with Louis XV.? She never owned so much to me: she admitted, however, that she had been very much loved, but she pretended that she had treated the royal lover with the utmost harshness.

"I have seen him at my feet," she would say to me; "he had charming eyes, and his language was seductive. He offered one day to give me a porcelain dressing-table, like that which Madame de Pompadour had.

"'Oh, Sire,' cried I, 'then I must use it to hide under!'"

By a singular chance I came across this dressing-table at the Marchioness Conyngham's in London; she had received it from George IV., and showed it to me with amusing simplicity.

Madame de Coislin occupied in her house a room opening under the colonnade corresponding to the colonnade of the Wardrobe. Two sea-pieces by Vernet [664], which Louis "the Well-beloved" had given to the noble dame, were hung up on an old green satin tapestry. Madame de Coislin remained lying till two o'clock in the afternoon in a large bed, with curtains also of green silk, seated and propped up by pillows; a sort of nightcap, badly fastened to her head, allowed her grey hairs to escape. Sprigs of diamonds mounted in the old-fashioned way fell upon the shoulder-pieces of her bed-cloak, all covered with snuff, as in the time of the fashionable ladies of the Fronde. Around her, on the bed-clothes, lay scattered the addresses of letters, torn off the letters themselves, and on these addresses Madame de Coislin wrote down her thoughts in every direction: she bought no stationery, the post supplied her with it. From time to time a little dog called Lili put her nose outside the sheets, came to bark at me for five or six minutes, and crept back growling into her mistress' kennel. Thus had time settled the young loves of Louis XV.

Madame de Châteauroux [665] and her two sisters were cousins of Madame de Coislin; the latter would not have been of the humour, as was Madame de Mailly [666], repentant and a Christian, to reply to a man who insulted her with a coarse name in the church of Saint-Roch:

"My friend, since you know me, pray to God for me."

Madame de Coislin, miserly as are many people of wit, piled up her money in cupboards. She lived all devoured by a vermin of crown-pieces which clung to her skin; her servants relieved her. When I found her plunged in a maze of figures, she reminded me of the miser Hermocrates [667], who, when dictating his will, appointed himself his own heir. Nevertheless she gave a dinner occasionally; but she would rail against coffee, which nobody liked, according to her, and which served only to prolong the repast.

Madame de Chateaubriand took a journey to Vichy with Madame de Coislin and the Marquis de Nesle; the marquis went on ahead, and had excellent dinners prepared. Madame de Coislin came after, and asked only for half a pound of cherries. On leaving, she was presented with huge bills, and then there was a terrible outcry. She would not hear of anything except the cherries; the landlord maintained that, whether you ate or did not eat, the custom was, at an inn, to pay for your dinner.

Madame de Coislin had invented a form of illuminism to her own taste. Credulous and incredulous, she was led by her want of faith to laugh at those beliefs the superstition of which frightened her. She had met Madame de Krüdener; the mysterious Frenchwoman was illuminated only under reserve; she did not please the fervent Russian, whom she herself liked no better. Madame de Krüdener said passionately to Madame de Coislin:

"Madame, who is your inside confessor?"

"Madame," replied Madame de Coislin, "I know nothing about my inside confessor; I only know that my confessor is in the inside of his confessional."

Thereupon the two ladies saw each other no more.

Madame de Coislin prided herself on having introduced a novelty at Court, the fashion of floating chignons, in spite of Queen Marie Leczinska [668], who was very pious and who opposed this dangerous innovation. She held that formerly no genteel person would ever have thought of paying her doctor. Crying out against the plentifulness of women's linen:

"That smacks of the upstart," she said; "we women of the Court had only two shifts: when they were worn out, we renewed them; we were dressed in silk gowns, and we did not look like grisettes, like the young ladies of nowadays."

Madame Suard [669], who lived in the Rue Royale, had a cock whose crowing annoyed Madame de Coislin. She wrote to Madame Suard:

"Madame, have your cock's throat cut."

Madame Suard sent back the messenger with this note:

"Madame, I have the honour to reply to you that I shall not have my cock's throat cut."

The correspondence went no further. Madame de Coislin said to Madame de Chateaubriand:

"Ah, my heart, what a time we live in! And yet it's that Panckoucke girl, the wife of that member of the Academy [670], you know."

M. Hennin [671], a former clerk at the Foreign Office, and as tedious as a protocol, used to scribble fat novels. One day he was reading a description to Madame de Coislin: a tearful and abandoned love-lorn woman was mournfully fishing a salmon. Madame de Coislin, who was growing impatient, and who disliked salmon, interrupted the author and said with the serious air which made her so comical:

"Monsieur Hennin, could you not make that lady catch a different fish?"

The stories which Madame de Coislin told could not be recollected, for there was nothing in them; all lay in the pantomime, the accent, and the expression of the narrator: she never laughed. There was one dialogue between "Monsieur and Madame Jacqueminot," the perfection of which surpassed everything. When, in the conversation between the husband and wife, Madame Jacqueminot rejoined, "But, Monsieur Jacqueminot!" the name was pronounced in such a tone that you were seized with immoderate laughter. Obliged to let this pass, Madame de Coislin gravely waited, taking snuff.

Reading in a newspaper of the death of several kings, she took off her spectacles, and blowing her nose, said:

"There is an epizootic among crowned cattle."

Death of Madame de Coislin.

At the moment when she was ready to breathe her last, they were maintaining by her bedside that one succumbed only through letting one's self go; that, if one paid great attention, and never lost sight of the enemy, one would not die at all.

"I believe it," she said; "but I fear that something would distract me."

She expired.

I went down to her room the next day; I found Monsieur [672] and Madame d'Avaray, her brother-in-law and sister, sitting before the fire-place, with a little table between them, counting the louis in a bag which they had taken from a hollow wainscoting. The poor dead woman was there in her bed, behind the half-closed curtains: she no longer heard the sound of the gold which ought to have awaked her, and which fraternal hands were counting.

Among the thoughts written down by the defunct on margins of printed paper and addresses of letters were some which were extremely beautiful. Madame de Coislin showed me what remained of the Court of Louis XV. under Bonaparte and after Louis XVI., even as Madame de Houdetot had enabled me to see what still lingered, in the nineteenth century, of philosophic society.

In the summer of the year 1805, I went to join Madame de Chateaubriand at Vichy, where Madame de Coislin had taken her, as I have said. I did not find Jussac, Termes, Flamarens there, whom Madame de Sévigné had "before and behind her" in 1677: they had been sleeping since one hundred and twenty and so many years. I left my sister, Madame de Caud, in Paris, where she had fixed her residence since the autumn of 1804. After a short stay at Vichy, Madame de Chateaubriand proposed that we should travel, in order to be away for some time from the political troubles.

Two little Journeys[673] which I then took in Auvergne and to Mont Blanc have been collected in my works. After an absence of thirty-four years, I have lately received at Clermont, from men unacquainted with my person, the reception usually shown to an old friend. He who has long occupied himself with the principles which the human race enjoys in common has friends, brothers and sisters in every family; for, if man is thankless, humanity is grateful. To those who have connected themselves with you through a kindly reputation, and who have never seen you, you are always the same; you have always the age which they ascribed to you; their attachment, which is not disturbed by your presence, always beholds you young and beautiful, like the sentiments which they love in your writings.

When I was a child, in my Brittany, and heard speak of Auvergne, I imagined it a very distant, very distant country, where one saw strange things, where one could not go without great danger, and travelling under the protection of the Blessed Virgin. I never meet without a sort of melting curiosity those little Auvergnats who go to seek their fortunes in this great world with a small deal chest. They have little besides hope in their box, as they climb down their rocks: lucky are they if they bring it back with them!

Alas, Madame de Beaumont had not lain two years on the bank of the Tiber when I trod her natal soil in 1805; I was at but a few leagues from that Mont Dore where she had come in search of the life which she lengthened a little in order to reach Rome. Last summer, in 1838, I once more travelled through this same Auvergne. Between those two dates, 1805 and 1838, I can place the transformations which society has undergone around me.

We left Clermont and, on our way to Lyons, passed through Thiers and Roanne. This road, then little frequented, followed at intervals the banks of the Lignon. The author of the Astrée[674], who is not a great genius, nevertheless invented places and persons that live: such is the creative power of fiction, when it is appropriate to the age in which it appears. There is, moreover, something ingeniously fantastic in that resurrection of the nymphs and naiads who mingle with shepherds, ladies and knights: those different worlds go well together, and one is agreeably pleased with the fables of mythology united to the lies of fiction; Rousseau has related how he was taken in by d'Urfé.

Geneva.

At Lyons, we again found M. Ballanche: he made the excursion to Geneva and Mont Blanc with us. He went wherever one took him, without having the smallest business there. At Geneva, I was not received at the gate of the city by Clotilda, the betrothed of Clovis: M. de Barante, senior [675], had become Prefect of the Léman. At Coppet, I went to see Madame de Staël: I found her alone, buried in her castle, which was built round a melancholy court-yard. I spoke to her of her fortune and of her solitude as a precious means of independence and happiness: I offended her. Madame de Staël loved society; she looked upon herself as the most wretched of women, in an exile with which I should have been enchanted. Where in my eyes was the unhappiness of living on one's property with all the comforts of life? Where was the misfortune of enjoying fame, leisure, peace, in a sumptuous retreat within sight of the Alps, in comparison with those thousands of breadless, nameless, helpless victims, banished to all the corners of Europe, while their parents had perished on the scaffold? It is sad to be attacked by an ill which the crowd cannot understand. For the rest, that ill is therefore only the more intense: it is not lessened by being confronted with other ills; one is not judged by another's pain; that which afflicts the one rejoices the other; hearts have varied secrets, incomprehensible to other hearts. Let us deny none his sufferings; it is with sorrows as with countries: each man has his own.

Madame de Staël called the next day on Madame de Chateaubriand at Geneva, and we left for Chamouny. My opinion on the scenery of the mountains caused it to be said that I was seeking to make myself singular. It will be seen, when I come to speak of the Saint-Gothard, that I have kept to my opinion. In the Voyage au Mont-Blanc appears a passage which I will recall as linking together the past events of my life and the events of that same life then still future, and to-day also past:

"There is one circumstance alone in which it is true that the mountains produce an oblivion of earthly troubles: that is when one withdraws far from the world to consecrate himself to religion. An anchorite devoting himself to the service of mankind, a saint wishing to meditate in silence on the greatness of God, may find peace and joy on desert rocks; but it is not then the tranquillity of the spot that passes into the soul of those solitaries: it is, on the contrary, their soul that diffuses its serenity through the region of storms....

"There are mountains which I would still visit with extreme pleasure: those, for instance, of Greece and Judæa. I should like to go over the spots with which my new studies lead me daily to occupy myself: I would gladly seek, upon the Tabor and Taygetus, other colours and other harmonies, after painting the unfamed mountains and unknown valleys of the New World."

The last phrase foretold the voyage which, in fact, I performed in the next year, 1806.

The Comte de Forbin.

On our return to Geneva, without being able to see Madame de Staël again at Coppet, we found the inns crammed. But for the cares of M. de Forbin [676], who arrived unexpectedly and procured us a bad dinner in a dark waiting-room, we should have left the birth-place of Rousseau without eating. M. de Forbin was at that time in a state of beatitude; he displayed in his looks the inner felicity with which he was inundated; his feet did not touch the ground. Wafted on his talent and his blissfulness, he came down from the mountain as though from the sky, with his close-fitting painter's jacket, his pallet on his thumb, his brushes in a quiver. A good fellow, nevertheless, although excessively happy, preparing to imitate me one day, when I should have made my voyage to Syria, wishing even to go as far as Calcutta, to make his loves return to him by an uncommon road, when they failed him on the beaten track. His eyes showed a protecting pity: I was poor, humble, uncertain of myself, and I did not hold the hearts of princesses in my mighty hands. In Rome, I have had the honour of returning M. de Forbin his lake-side dinner; I had the merit of having become an ambassador. In these days one sees the poor devil whom one has left that morning in the street turned into a king by evening.

The noble gentleman, a painter in right of the Revolution, began that generation of artists who dress themselves up like sketches, grotesques, caricatures. Some wear prodigious mustachioes: one would think they were going to conquer the world; their brushes are halberds, their erasing-knives sabres: others have huge beards, and hanging or puffed-out hair; they smoke a cigar by way of vulcano. These "cousins of the rainbow," as our old Régnier [677] says, have their heads filled with deluges, seas, rivers, forests, cataracts, tempests, or else with carnages, executions and scaffolds. In their rooms they have human skulls, foils, mandolines, morions, and dolmans. Bragging, pushing, uncivil, liberal (as far as the portrait of the tyrant whom they are painting), they endeavour to form a separate species between the ape and the satyr; they are anxious to make it understood that the secrecy of the studio has its dangers, and that there is no safety for the models. But how handsomely do they not redeem these oddities by a fevered existence, a suffering and sensitive nature, an entire abnegation of self, an incalculable devotion to the miseries of others, a delicate, superior, idealized manner of feeling, a poverty proudly welcomed and nobly endured; lastly, sometimes by immortal talents: the offspring of work, passion, genius, and solitude!

Leaving Geneva at night to return to Lyons, we were stopped at the foot of the Fort de l'Écluse, waiting for the gates to be opened. During this stay of the witches in Macbeth on the heath, strange things passed within me. My dead years came to life again and surrounded me like a band of phantoms; my burning seasons returned to me in their flame and sadness. My life, hollowed out by the death of Madame de Beaumont, had remained empty: airy forms, houris or dreams, issuing from that abyss, took me by the hand and led me back to the days of the sylph. I was no longer in the spot which I occupied, I dreamed of other shores. Some secret influence urged me to the regions of the Dawn, whither I was drawn besides by the plan of my new work and the religious voice which released me from the vow of the village woman, my foster-mother. As all my faculties had extended, as I had never misused life, it superabounded with the pith of my intelligence, and art, triumphing in my nature, added to the poet's inspirations. I had what the Fathers of the Thebaïde called "ascensions" of the heart. Raphael—forgive the blasphemy of the simile—Raphael, before the Transfiguration only sketched upon the easel, could not have been more electrified by his master-piece than was I by Eudore and Cymodocée, whose names I did not yet know and whose images I dimly saw through an atmosphere of love and fame.

Thus does the native genius which tormented me in the cradle sometimes return on its steps after deserting me; thus are my former sufferings renewed; nothing heals within me; if my wounds close instantly, they open again suddenly like those of the crucifixes of the Middle Ages, which bleed on the anniversary of the Passion. I have no alternative, to obtain relief during these crises, but to give a free course to the fever of my thoughts, in the same way as one has his veins lanced when the blood rushes to the heart or rises to the head. But of what am I speaking! O religion, where then are thy powers, thy restraints, thy balsams! Am I not writing all these things at a distance of countless years from the hour at which I gave birth to René? I had a thousand reasons to believe myself dead, and I live! 'Tis a great pity. Those afflictions of the isolated poet, condemned to suffer the spring in spite of Saturn, are unknown to the man who does not go outside the common laws; for him the years are ever young:

"The young kids," says Oppian, "watch over the author of their being; when he comes to fall into the huntsman's net, they offer him in their mouths the tender, flowering grass, which they have gone to gather from afar, and bring him in their lips fresh water, drawn from the adjacent brook [678]."

On my return from Lyons I found letters from M. Joubert: they informed me that it was not possible for him to be at Villeneuve before September. I replied:

Lyons and M. Saget.

"Your departure from Paris is too remote and distresses me; you well know that my wife will never consent to arrive at Villeneuve before you: she has a head of her own, and since she has been with me, I find myself at the head of two heads very difficult to govern. We shall remain at Lyons, where they make us eat so prodigiously that I hardly have the courage to leave this excellent town. The Abbé de Bonnevie is here, back from Rome; he is wonderfully well; he is merry, he preachifies, and no longer thinks of his woes; he embraces you and will write to you. In short, everybody is in high spirits, except myself; you are the only one to grumble. Tell Fontanes that I have dined with M. Saget."

This M. Saget was the providence of the canons; he lived on the hill of Sainte-Foix, in the district of the good wine. The way to his house led up near the spot where Rousseau had spent the night on the banks of the Saône:

"I remember," he says, "spending a delightful night outside the town, on a road which skirted the Saône. Gardens raised terrace-wise bordered the road on the opposite side: it had been very warm that day; the evening was charming, the dew moistened the parched grass; no wind, a quiet night; the air was cool without being chill; the sun after setting had left red vapours in the sky, and their reflection made the water rose-coloured; the trees on the terraces were laden with nightingales which replied one to the other. I walked along in a sort of ecstasy, abandoning my senses and my heart to the enjoyment of all this, and only sighing a little with regret at enjoying it alone. Absorbed in my sweet reverie, I prolonged my walk well into the night, without perceiving that I was tired. I perceived it at last: I lay down voluptuously on the shelf of a sort of niche or false door, sunk into a terrace-wall; the canopy of my bed consisted of the tops of the trees, a nightingale was exactly over my head; I fell asleep to its singing: my slumbers were sweet, my awakening even more so. It was broad day-light: my eyes on opening beheld the water, the verdure, an admirable landscape."

With Rousseau's charming itinerary in one's hand, one arrived at M. Saget's. This ancient and lean bachelor, formerly married, wore a green cap, a grey camlet coat, nankeen pantaloons, blue stockings and beaver shoes. He had lived long in Paris, and had been intimate with Mademoiselle Devienne [679]. She wrote him very witty letters, scolded him, and gave him very good advice: he ignored it, for he did not take the world seriously, believing apparently, like the Mexicans, that the world had already used four suns, and that at the fourth (which is lighting us at present) men had been changed into maggots. He did not trouble his mind about the martyrdom of St. Pothin [680] and St. Ireneus [681], nor of the massacre of the Protestants drawn up side by side by order of Mandelot [682], the Governor of Lyons, all of them having their throats cut on the same side. Opposite the field of the shooting at the Brotteaux [683], he would tell me details of it, while strolling among his vines, mingling with his narrative verses of Loyse Labbé [684]: he would not have missed a single mouthful during the last misfortunes of Lyons, under the Charte-Vérité.

On certain days a certain calf's head was served up at Sainte-Foix, after being soused for five nights, boiled in madeira, and stuffed full of exquisite things; very pretty peasant-girls waited at table; they served excellent homegrown wine out of demi-johns the size of three bottles. We swooped upon the Saget banquet, I and the cassocked chapter: the hill-side was quite black with us.

Our dapifer soon came to the end of his provisions: in the ruin of his last moments he was taken in by two or three of the old mistresses who had plundered his life, "a kind of women," says St. Cyprian [685], "who live as though they could be loved: quæ sic vivis ut possis adamari."

The Grande Chartreuse.

We tore ourselves from the delights of Capua to go and see the Chartreuse, still accompanied by M. Ballanche. We hired a calash whose disjointed wheels made a lamentable noise. On reaching Voreppe we stopped at an inn at the top of the town. The next morning, at break of day, we mounted on horseback and set out preceded by a guide. At the village of Saint-Laurent, at the bottom of the Grande-Chartreuse, we crossed the threshold of the valley, and passing between two walls of rocks, followed the road leading up to the monastery. When speaking of Combourg, I have told you what I experienced in that spot. The deserted buildings were cracking under the supervision of a kind of farmer of the ruins. A lay-brother had remained to take care of an infirm solitary who had just died: religion had imposed loyalty and obedience upon friendship. We saw the narrow grave freshly covered over: Napoleon was just about to dig a huge one at Austerlitz. We were shown the convent enclosure, the cells, each with its garden and workshop; we noticed joiners' boards and turners' wheels: the hand had dropped the chisel. In a gallery were displayed the portraits of the superiors of the Chartreuse. The ducal palace at Venice preserves the series of the ritratti of the doges: what different spots and memories! Higher up, at some distance, we were taken to the chapel of Le Sueur's [686] immortal recluse [687].

After dining in an immense kitchen, we set out again and met, carried in a palanquin like a rajah, M. Chaptal, formerly an apothecary, then a senator, next owner of Chanteloup and inventor of beetroot sugar, the greedy heir of the beautiful Indian reed-canes of Sicily, perfected by the Otaheitan sun. As I descended from the forests, my thoughts turned to the cenobites of old; for centuries, they carried, together with a little earth, in the skirts of their gowns, fir plants which have grown into trees on the rocks. Happy O ye who travelled noiselessly through the world, nor even turned your heads in passing!

No sooner had we reached the entrance to the valley than a storm burst; a deluge dashed down, and vexed torrents rushed roaring from every ravine. Madame de Chateaubriand, becoming reckless for very fear, galloped through the flint stones, the water and the lightning-flashes. She had flung away her umbrella the better to hear the thunder; the guide cried to her:

"Recommend your soul to God! In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost!"

We reached Voreppe to the sound of the tocsin; what remained of the cloven storm lay before us. In the distant landscape, we saw a blazing village and the moon rounding out the upper portion of his disc above the clouds, like the pale, bald forehead of St. Bruno, the founder of the order of silence. M. Ballanche, all dripping with rain, said with his immovable placidity:

"I am like a fish in the water."

I have just seen Voreppe again, in this year 1838: the storm was there no longer; but two witnesses of it still remain, Madame de Chateaubriand and M. Ballanche. I mention this because I have too often, in these Memoirs, had to call attention to the dead.

On returning to Lyons we left our companion there, and went to Villeneuve. I have told you about this little town, my walks and my regrets on the banks of the Yonne with M. Joubert. Three old maids used to live there, Mesdemoiselles Piat; they reminded me of my grandmother's three friends at Plancoët, saving the difference in social position. The virgins of Villeneuve died one after the other, and I thought of them when I saw a grass-grown flight of steps, running up outside their empty house. What used these village damsels to talk about in their time! They spoke of a dog, and of a muff which their father had once bought them at Sens Fair. To me this was as charming as the council of the same town at which St. Bernard had Abélard, my fellow-Breton, condemned. The maids of the muff were Heloïses perhaps; perhaps they loved, and their letters, brought to light, will one day entrance posterity. Who knows? Perhaps they wrote to their "lord, also their father, also their brother, also their spouse: domino suo, imo patri," etc., that they felt honoured by the name of friend, by the name of "mistress" or of "courtesan: concubinæ vel scorti."

"In the midst of his learning," says a grave doctor, "I find that Abélard played an admirably foolish prank when he suborned with love his pupil Héloïse."

Illness of Lucile.

A great and new sorrow surprised me at Villeneuve. To tell it you, I must go back to a few months before my Swiss journey. I was still occupying the house in the Rue Miromesnil when, in the autumn of 1804, Madame de Caud came to Paris. The death of Madame de Beaumont had finished the affecting of my sister's reason; she was very near refusing to believe in the death, suspecting some mystery in the disappearance, or including Heaven in the number of the enemies who mocked at her misfortunes. She had nothing; I had chosen an apartment in the Rue Caumartin for her, deceiving her as to the rent and as to the arrangements which I told her to make with the keeper of an eating-house. Like a flame ready to expire, her genius shed the brightest light; she was all illumined with it. She would write a few lines which she threw into the fire, or else copy from books some thoughts in harmony with the disposition of her soul. She did not remain long in the Rue Caumartin; she went to live with the Dames Saint-Michel, in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Jacques: Madame de Navarre was the superior of the convent. Lucile had a little cell overlooking the garden: I noticed that she followed with her eyes, with I know not what gloomy longing, the nuns who walked in the enclosure around the vegetable beds. One could guess that she envied the saints and, going further, aspired to the angels. I will sanctify these Memoirs by deposing in them, as relics, the following letters of Madame de Caud, written before she had taken flight for her eternal country:

"17 January.

"I had placed all my happiness in you and in Madame de Beaumont; I fled from my cares and my sorrows in the thought of you two: my whole occupation was to love you. Last night I made long reflections upon your character and your ways. As you and I are always near each other, it needs some time, I think, to know me, such is the variety of ideas in my head! Such is the opposition of my timidity and my peculiar external weakness to my real inner strength! Too much about myself. My illustrious brother, accept my fondest thanks for all the favours and all the marks of friendship which you have never ceased to show me. This is the last letter you will receive from me in the morning. Albeit I communicate my ideas to you, they nevertheless remain quite completely within myself."

(No date.)

"Do you seriously, dear, think me safe from some impertinence on the part of M. Chênedollé? I am quite determined not to invite him to continue his visits; I resign myself to look upon Tuesday's as the last. I do not wish to trouble his politeness. I am closing for ever the book of my fate, and sealing it with the seal of reason; I shall now consult its pages no more on the trifles than on the important things of life. I give up all my foolish notions; I wish neither to occupy nor to vex myself with those of other people; I will abandon myself with heart and soul to all the events of my passage through this world. What a pity that I should pay myself so much attention! God can now afflict me only in you. I thank Him for the precious, kind and dear present which He has made me in your person and for having preserved my life without stain: those are all my treasures. I could take for an emblem of my life the moon in a cloud, with this device: 'Often obscured, never tarnished.' Farewell, dear. You will perhaps be surprised at my words since yesterday morning. Since I saw you, my heart has raised itself to God, and I have laid it wholly at the foot of the Cross, its sole and true place."

"Thursday.

"Good-morning, dear. What colour are your ideas this morning? As for me, I remember that the only person who was able to relieve me when I was fearing for Madame de Farcy's life was she who said to me, 'But it is within the range of possible things that you may die before her.' Could any one have spoken more to the point? There is nothing, dear, like the idea of death to rid us of the future. I hasten to rid you of myself this morning, for I feel myself too much in the mood to say fine things. Good-bye, my poor brother. Keep joyful."

(No date.)

"While Madame de Farcy lived, always by her side, I had not noticed the need of being in communion of thought with some one. I possessed that advantage unconsciously. But since we lost that friend, and circumstances having separated me from you, I have known the torture of never being able to refresh and renew one's mind in some one's conversation; I feel that my ideas hurt me when I am unable to get rid of them; this has surely to do with my bad organization. Nevertheless I am fairly satisfied, since yesterday, with my courage. I pay no attention to my grief and to the sort of inward faintness which I feel. I have abandoned myself. Continue to be always kind to me: before long it will be humanity. Good-bye, dear. Till soon, I hope."

Lucile's letters.

(No date.)

"Be easy, dear; my health is recovering visibly. I often ask myself why I take so much pains to bolster it up. I am like a madman who should build a fortress in the middle of a desert. Farewell, my poor brother."

(No date.)

"As I have a bad headache to-night, I have just simply, and at haphazard, written down some thoughts of Fénelon's for you, so as to keep my promise:

'"We are confined within narrow limits when we shut ourselves up in our own existence; on the contrary, we feel at liberty when we quit this prison to enter into the immensity of God.'

"'We shall soon find once more all that we have lost We are daily approaching it with rapid strides. Yet a little while, and we shall no more have cause to weep. It is we who die: what we love still lives and shall never die.'

"'You impart to yourself a deceitful strength, such as a raging fever gives to a sick man. For some days past, a sort of convulsive movement has been visible in you, from the effort to affect an air of gaiety and courage, whilst a silent anguish filled your soul.'

"That is as much as my head and my bad pen permit me to write to you this evening. If you like, I will begin again to-morrow, and perhaps tell you some more. Good-evening, dear. I shall never cease telling you that my heart prostrates itself before that of Fénelon, whose tenderness seems to me so profound, and his virtue so exalted. Good-bye, dear.

"I am awake, and offer you a thousand loves and a hundred blessings. I feel well this morning and am anxious as to whether you will be able to read me, and whether those thoughts of Fénelon's will seem to you well chosen. I fear my heart has concerned itself too much with the selection."

(No date.)

"Could you think that since yesterday I have been madly occupied in correcting you? The Blossacs have trusted me with one of your novels in the greatest secrecy. As I do not think that you have made the most of your ideas, I am amusing myself by trying to render them in their full value. Can audacity go further than that? Forgive me, great man, and remember that I am your sister, and that I have some little right to make an ill use of your riches."

"Saint-Michel.

"I will no longer say, 'Do not come to see me again,' because, having from now but a few days to spend in Paris, I feel that your presence is essential to me. Do not come to-day until four; I expect to be out till then. Dear, I have in my head a thousand contradictory ideas touching things which seem to me to exist and not to exist, which to me have the effect of objects of which one only caught sight in a glass, and of which, consequently, one could not make sure, however distinctly one saw them. I wish to trouble about all this no longer; from this moment I abandon myself. Unlike you, I have not the resource of changing banks, but I feel sufficient courage to attach no importance to the persons and things on my shore, and to fix myself entirely and irrevocably in the Author of all justice and all truth. There is only one displeasure to which I fear that I shall grow insensible with great difficulty, that of unintentionally, in passing, striking against the destiny of some other person, not because of any interest that might be taken in me: I am not mad enough for that."

"Saint-Michel.

"Dear, never did the sound of your voice give me so much pleasure as when I heard it yesterday on my staircase. My ideas then strove to overcome my courage. I was seized with content to feel you so near me; you appeared, and my whole inner being returned to orderliness. I sometimes feel a great repugnance at heart to drinking my cup. How can that heart, which is so small a space, contain so much existence and so much grief? I am greatly dissatisfied with myself, greatly dissatisfied. My affairs and my ideas carry me away; I scarcely occupy myself with God now, and I confine myself to saying to Him a hundred times a day, 'O Lord, make haste to hearken unto my prayer, for my spirit waxeth faint.'"

More letters from Lucile.

(No date.)

"Brother, do not grow weary of my letter, nor of my company; think that soon you will be for ever released from my importunities. My life is casting its last light, like a lamp which has burnt out in the darkness of a long night, and which sees the rise of the dawn in which it is to die. Please, brother, cast a single glance at the early moments of our existence; remember that we have often been seated on the same lap, and pressed both together to the same bosom; that already you added tears to mine, that from the earliest days of your life you protected and defended my frail existence, that our games united us and that I shared your first studies. I will not speak to you of our adolescence, of the innocence of our thoughts and of our joys, nor of our mutual need to see each other incessantly. If I retrace the past, I candidly confess, brother, that it is to make me revive the more in your heart. When you left France for the second time, you placed your wife in my hands, you made me promise never to part from her. True to this dear engagement, I voluntarily stretched out my hands to the irons, and entered into the regions destined alone for the victims vowed to death. In those abodes I have had no anxiety save as to your fate; incessantly I questioned the forebodings of my heart touching yourself. When I had recovered my liberty, amidst the ills which came to overwhelm me, the thought alone of our meeting kept me up. To-day, when I am irretrievably losing the hope of running my course by your side, bear with my griefs. I shall become resigned to my destiny, and it is only because I am still fighting against it that I suffer such cruel anguish; but when I shall have grown submissive to my fate.... And what a fate! Where are my friends, my protectors and my treasures! To whom matters my existence, that existence abandoned by all, and weighing down entirely upon itself? My God, are not my present woes enough for my weakness, without yet adding to them the dread of the future? Forgive me, my too dear friend, I will resign myself; I will fall asleep, in a slumber as of death, upon my destiny. But, during the few days which I have to spend in this town, let me seek my last consolations in you; let me believe that my presence is sweet to you. Believe me, among the hearts that love you, none approaches the sincerity and tenderness of my impotent friendship for you. Fill my memory with agreeable recollections, which prolong my existence beside you. Yesterday, when you spoke to me of coming to you, you seemed to me anxious and serious, while your words were affectionate. Why, brother, could I be to you also a subject of aversion and annoyance? You know it was not I that proposed the amiable distraction of going to see you, and that I promised you to make no ill use of it; but, if you have changed your opinion, why did you not tell me so frankly? I have no courage to set against your politeness. Formerly you used to distinguish me a little more from the common herd and to do me more justice. As you reckon upon me to-day, I will come to see you presently, at eleven o'clock. We will arrange together what seems best to you for the future. I have written to you, feeling sure that I should not have the courage to say to you a single word of what this letter contains."

This so affecting and quite admirable letter is the last which I received; it alarmed me through the increase of sadness of which it bears the impress. I hurried to the Dames Saint-Michel; my sister was walking in the garden with Madame de Navarre; she went in when she knew that I had gone up to her room. She made visible efforts to collect her ideas, and at intervals she had a slight convulsive movement of the lips. I entreated her to return entirely to reason, to cease writing such unjust things to me, things that rent my heart, to cease thinking that I could ever grow weary of her. She appeared to grow a little calmer at the words which I repeated to distract and console her. She told me that she believed that the convent was doing her harm, that she would feel better living alone, in the neighbourhood of the Jardin des Plantes, there where she could see doctors and walk about. I urged her to please her own taste, adding that in order to help Virginie, her maid, I would give her old Saint-Germain. This proposal seemed to give her great pleasure, in memory of Madame de Beaumont, and she assured me that she would go to look out for her new lodging. She asked me how I was thinking of spending the summer. I said that I should go to Vichy to join my wife, and then to M. Joubert at Villeneuve, to return to Paris from there. I suggested to her to accompany us. She answered that she wished to spend the summer alone, and that she was going to send Virginie back to Fougères. I left her; she was more at ease.

Madame de Chateaubriand left for Vichy, and I prepared to follow her. Before leaving Paris I went again to see Lucile. She was affectionate; she spoke to me of her little writings. I encouraged the great poet to work; she kissed me, wished me a good journey, made me promise to come back soon. She saw me to the landing of the staircase, leant over the baluster, and quietly watched me go down. When I reached the bottom I stopped, and lifting my head, cried to the unhappy woman who was still looking at me:

"Farewell, dear sister! I shall see you soon! Take great care of yourself! Write to me at Villeneuve. I will write to you. I hope that next winter you will agree to live with us."

Death of Lucile.

That evening I saw the worthy Saint-Germain; I gave him orders and some money, so that he might secretly reduce the prices of anything she might require. I enjoined him to keep me informed of everything and not to fail to call me back in case he should want to see me. Three months passed. When I reached Villeneuve, I found two fairly tranquillizing letters about Madame de Caud's health: but Saint-Germain forgot to speak to me of my sister's new lodging. I had begun to write her a long letter, when suddenly Madame de Chateaubriand fell dangerously ill: I was at her bedside when I was brought a new letter from Saint-Germain; I opened it: a withering line told me of the sudden death of Lucile.

I have cared for many tombs in my life: it fell to my lot and to my sister's destiny that her ashes should be flung to the skies. I was not in Paris when she died; I had no relations there; kept at Villeneuve by my wife's critical condition, I was unable to go to the sacred remains; orders sent from a distance arrived too late to prevent a common burial. Lucile knew no one and had not a friend; she was known only to Madame de Beaumont's old servant: it was as though he had been charged to link two destinies. He alone followed the forsaken coffin, and he himself was dead before Madame de Chateaubriand's sufferings allowed me to bring her back to Paris.

My sister was buried among the poor: in what grave-yard was she laid? In what motionless wave of an ocean of dead was she swallowed up? In what house did she die, after leaving the community of the Dames de Saint-Michel? If, by making researches, if, by examining the archives of the municipalities, the registers of the parishes, I should come across my sister's name, what would that avail me [688]? Should I find the same keeper of the cemetery? Should I find the man who dug a grave that remained nameless and unlabelled? Would the rough hands that were the last to touch so pure a clay have remembered it? What nomenclator of the shades could point out to me the obliterated tomb? Might he not make a mistake as to the dust? Since Heaven has willed it so, let Lucile be for ever lost! I find in this absence of locality a distinction from the burials of my other friends. My predecessor in this world and in the next is praying to the Redeemer for me; she is praying to Him from the midst of the pauper remains among which her own lie confounded: even so does Lucile's mother and mine rest lost among the preferred of Jesus Christ. God will certainly have been able to recognise my sister; and she, who was so little attached to earth, ought to leave no trace there. She has left me, that sainted genius. Not a day has passed but I have wept for her. Lucile loved to hide herself; I have made her a solitude in my heart: she shall leave it only when I shall have ceased to live [689].

Those are the true, the only events of my real life! What mattered to me, at the moment when I was losing my sister, the thousands of soldiers falling on the battlefields, the destruction of thrones, the changes in the face of the world?

Lucile's death struck at the sources of my soul: it was my childhood in the midst of my family, the first vestiges of my existence, that were disappearing. Our life resembles those frail buildings, shored up in the sky by flying buttresses: they do not crumble at once, but become loose piecemeal; they still support some gallery or other, while already they have become separated from the chancel or vault of the edifice. Madame de Chateaubriand, still bruised by Lucile's imperious whims, saw only a deliverance for the Christian who had gone to rest in the Lord. Let us be gentle if we would be regretted; the loftiness of genius and the higher qualities are mourned only by the angels. But I cannot enter into the consolation of Madame de Chateaubriand.

My journey to the East.

When, returning to Paris by the Burgundy road, I caught sight of the cupola of the Val-de-Grâce and the dome of Sainte-Geneviève, which overlooks the Jardin des Plantes, my heart was broken: one more companion of my life left on the wayside! We went back to the Hôtel de Coislin, and although M. de Fontanes, M. Joubert, M. de Clausel, M. Molé came to spend the evenings with me, I was distraught by so many memories and thoughts that I was utterly exhausted. Remaining alone behind the objects that had quitted me, like a foreign mariner whose engagement has expired, and who has neither home nor country, I struck the shore with my foot; I longed to swim in a new ocean to refresh myself and cross it. Nursed on Mount Pindus, a crusader to Hierosolyma, I was impatient to go to mingle my loneliness with the ruins of Athens, my tears with those of the Magdalen.

I went to see my family [690] in Brittany, returned to Paris, and left for Trieste on the 13th of July 1806; Madame de Chateaubriand accompanied me as far as Venice, where M. Ballanche came to join her.

As my life is set forth hour by hour in the Itinéraire, I should have no more to say here, if I had not kept some hitherto unknown letters written or received during and after my voyage. Julien, my servant and companion, wrote his own Itinerary side by side with mine, just as passengers on a vessel keep their private logs on a journey of discovery. The little manuscript which he places at my disposal will serve as a check upon my narrative: I shall be Cook, he will be Clarke [691].

In order to bring into clearer light the different manner in which one is impressed according to one's place in the social order and in the intellectual hierarchy, I will mingle my narrative with Julien's [692]. I shall let him begin by speaking first, because he relates some days' sailing without me from Modon to Smyrna.

Julien's Itinerary.

"We went on board [693] on Friday the 1st of August; but, the wind not being favourable to leave harbour, we waited until daybreak the next morning. Then the harbour-pilot came to tell us that he could bring us out. As I had never been on the sea, I had formed an exaggerated idea of the danger, for I saw none during two days. But, on the third, a tempest rose; lightning, thunder and, in short, a terrible storm attacked us and beat up the sea frightfully. Our crew consisted of only eight sailors, a captain, a mate, a pilot and a cook, and five passengers, including Monsieur and myself, which made seventeen men in all. Then we all set ourselves to help the seamen in furling the sails, in spite of the rain with which we were soon drenched, having taken off our coats to move more freely. This work filled my thoughts and made me forget the danger, which, indeed, is more terrible through the idea which one forms of it than it is in reality. The storms followed one another during two days, which seasoned me in my first days of sea-faring; I was in no way inconvenienced. Monsieur was afraid lest I should be ill at sea; when calm set in again, he said to me:

"'Now I am reassured about your health; as you have borne these two stormy days so well, you can set your mind at rest as to any other mischance.'

"None occurred during the remainder of our crossing to Smyrna. On the 10th, which was a Sunday, Monsieur made them heave-to near a Turkish town called Modon, where he landed to go to Greece. Among the passengers who were with us were two Milanese, who were going to Smyrna to follow their trade of tinmen and pewter-founders. One of the two, called Joseph, spoke the Turkish language fairly well, and Monsieur proposed that he should go with him as servant interpreter, and mentions him in his Itinéraire. He told us, on leaving us, that the journey would only take a few days, that he would join the vessel at an island where we were to pass in four or five days, and that he would wait for us in that island if he arrived there before us. As Monsieur found that man to suit him for that short journey [694], he left me on board to continue my voyage to Smyrna and to look after all our luggage. He had given me a letter of recommendation to the French Consul, in case he did not join us, which was what happened. On the fourth day, we arrived at the appointed island and Monsieur was not there. We passed the night and waited for him till seven o'clock in the morning. The captain went back on shore to leave word that he was compelled to go on, having a fair wind and being obliged to take his crossing into consideration. Besides, he saw a pirate who was trying to approach us, and it was urgent that we should place ourselves promptly on the defensive. He made the men load his four pieces of cannon and bring on deck his muskets, pistols and side-arms; but, as the wind favoured us, the pirate gave us up. We arrived, on Monday the 18th, at seven o'clock in the evening, at the port of Smyrna."

*

Greece.

After crossing Greece, and touching Zea and Chio, I found Julien at Smyrna. To-day I see Greece in my memory as one of those dazzling circles which one sometimes beholds on closing one's eyes. Against that mysterious phosphorescence are outlined ruins of a delicate and admirable architecture, the whole rendered still more resplendent by I know not what brightness of the Muses. When shall I see again the thyme of Mount Hymettus, the oleanders of the banks of the Eurotas? One of the men whom I have left with the greatest envy on foreign shores is the Turkish custom-house officer of the Piræus: he lived alone, the guardian of three deserted ports, turning his gaze over bluey isles, gleaming promontories, golden seas. There I heard nought save the sound of the billows in the shattered tomb of Themistocles and the murmur of distant memories; in the silence of the ruins of Sparta, fame itself was dumb.

In the cradle of Melesigene I left my poor dragoman, Joseph, the Milanese, at his tinman's shop, and set out for Constantinople. I went to Pergamos, wishing first to go to Troy, from motives of poetic piety; a fall from my horse awaited me at the commencement of my road; not that Pegasus stumbled, but I slept. I have recalled this accident in my Itinéraire; Julien relates it also, and he makes remarks concerning the roads and the horses to the exactness of which I can certify.

Julien's Itinerary.

"Monsieur, who had fallen asleep on his horse, tumbled off without waking. His horse stopped forthwith, as did mine, which followed it. I at once alighted to know the reason, for it was impossible for me to see it at a fathom's distance. I saw Monsieur half asleep beside his horse, and quite astonished to find himself on the ground; he assured me that he had not hurt himself. His horse did not try to run away, which would have been dangerous, for there were precipices very near to the spot where we were."

On leaving the Soma, after passing Pergamos, I had the dispute with my guide which I describe in the Itinéraire. Here is Julien's version:

Julien's Itinerary.

"We left that village very early, after renewing our canteen. A little way from the village, I was greatly surprised to see Monsieur angry with our guide; I asked him the reason. Monsieur then told me that he had arranged with the guide, at Smyrna, that he would take him to the plains of Troy on the way, and that he was now refusing, saying that the plains were infested with brigands. Monsieur declined to believe a word of it, and would listen to no one. As I saw that he was getting more and more out of temper, I made a sign to the guide to come near the interpreter and the janissary to explain to me what he had been told about the dangers to be risked in the plains which Monsieur wished to visit. The guide told the interpreter that he had been assured that one had to be in great numbers not to be attacked; the janissary told me the same thing. Thereupon I went to Monsieur and told him what they had all three said, and that, besides, we should find a little village at a day's march where there was a sort of consul who would be able to inform us of the truth. After this statement, Monsieur composed himself, and we continued our road till we reached that place. He at once went to the consul, who told him of all the dangers he would risk if he persisted in his wish to go in such small numbers to those plains of Troy. Thereupon Monsieur was obliged to abandon his project, and we continued our road for Constantinople."

Constantinople.

I arrived at Constantinople.

My Itinerary.

"The almost total absence of women, the dearth of wheeled carriages, and the packs of ownerless dogs were the three distinctive characteristics that first struck me in this extraordinary town. As nearly every one walks in papouches, as there is no noise of carriages and carts, as there are no bells and scarcely any hammering trades, the silence is continual. You see around you a voiceless crowd which seems to wish to pass unnoticed, and which always looks as though it were stealing away from its master's sight. You constantly come to a bazaar or a cemetery, as though the Turks were only there to buy, sell, or die. The cemeteries, unwalled and placed in the middle of the streets, are magnificent cypress-woods: the doves build their nests in the cypress-trees and share the peace of the dead. Here and there one discovers some ancient monuments which have no connection with the modern men, nor with the new monuments by which they are surrounded; it is as though they had been transported to this eastern town by the working of a talisman. No sign of joy, no appearance of happiness shows itself to your eyes; what you see is not a people but a herd whom an iman drives and a janissary slays. Amidst the prisons and the gaols rises a seraglio, the capitol of servitude: it is there that a sacred guardian carefully preserves the germs of pestilence and the primitive laws of tyranny."

Julien does not soar so near the clouds [695].

My Itinerary.

"We were about two hundred passengers on the ship, men, women, children and old people. As many mats lay ranged in rows on both sides of the steerage. In this kind of republic, each kept house as he pleased: the women looked after their children, the men smoked or prepared their dinners, the popes talked together. On every side was heard the sound of mandolines, fiddles and lyres. They sang, they danced, they laughed, they prayed. Every one was joyful. They said to me, 'Jerusalem!' pointing to the south; and I replied, 'Jerusalem!' In short, but for the fright, we should have been the happiest people in the world; but at the least wind the seamen furled the sails, the pilgrims cried, 'Christos, Kyrie eleison!' When the storm had passed, we resumed our boldness."

Here I am beaten by Julien.

Julien's Itinerary.

"We had to busy ourselves with our departure for Jaffa, which took place on Thursday the 18th of September. We embarked on board a Greek ship, where there were at least, men, women, and children, one hundred and fifty Greeks who were going on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, which caused much disturbance on board.

"Like the other passengers, we too had our supply of provisions and our cooking utensils, which I had bought in Constantinople. I had, besides, a further and fairly complete supply which M. l'Ambassadeur had given us, consisting of very fine biscuits, hams, sausages, saveloys, different sorts of wine, rum, sugar, lemons, and even quinine-wine against the fever. I was therefore furnished with a very plentiful provision, which I husbanded and only consumed with great economy, knowing that we had more than this one crossing to make: everything was locked up where the passengers were not allowed to go.

"Our crossing, which lasted only thirteen days, seemed very long to me through all sorts of unpleasantness and uncleanliness on board. During several days of bad weather which we encountered, the women and children were sick, throwing up everywhere, so much so that we were obliged to leave our cabin and sleep on deck. There we took our meals much more comfortably than elsewhere, as we decided to wait until all our Greeks had finished their littering."

Mount Carmel.

I passed through the Dardanelles, touched at Rhodes, and took a pilot for the Syrian coast. We were stopped by a calm below the Asiatic continent, almost opposite the old Cape Chelidonia. We remained two days at sea without knowing where we were.

My Itinerary.

"The weather was so fine and the air so mild that all the passengers spent the night on deck. I had contended for a place on the quarter-deck with two fat caloyers, who yielded it to me only after much grumbling. I was lying asleep there at six o'clock in the morning on the 30th of September, when I was aroused by a confused noise of voices: I opened my eyes, and saw the pilgrims looking towards the prow of the vessel. I asked what it was; they shouted 'Signor, il Carmelo!' Mount Carmel! The wind had risen at eight o'clock the previous evening, and we had arrived in sight of the Syrian coast during the night. As I was sleeping fully dressed, I was soon on my feet, asking the whereabouts of the sacred mountain. Everyone was eager to point it out to me; but I perceived nothing, owing to the sun which was beginning to rise opposite to us. That moment had about it something religious and august: all the pilgrims, their beads in their hands, had remained silently in the same attitude, awaiting the apparition of the Holy Land; the chief of the popes prayed aloud: one heard only that prayer and the sound of the running of the vessel, which the most favourable wind was impelling across a dazzling sea. From time to time a shout rose from the prow, when one caught sight of Mount Carmel again. At last I myself perceived the mountain, like a round patch beneath the rays of the sun. I then went on my knees in the manner of the Latins. I did not feel the peculiar trouble which I experienced on discovering the coast of Greece: but the sight of the cradle of the Israelites and the native land of the Christians filled me with joy and respect. I was about to step upon the land of prodigies, near the sources of the most astounding poetry, in the region where, even humanly speaking, the greatest event took place that ever changed the face of the world. . . . . . . . . . .

"The wind dropped at noon; it rose again at four o'clock; but through the ignorance of the pilot we went beyond our aim.... At two o'clock in the afternoon we saw Jaffa again.

"A boat left the shore with three monks. I stepped into the launch with them; we entered the harbour through an opening effected between the rocks, and dangerous even for a ship's boat.

"The Arabs on the beach came out into the water to their waists, in order to take us on their shoulders. Then there followed a rather laughable scene: my servant was dressed in a whitish frock-coat; white being the colour of distinction among the Arabs, they deemed that Julien was the sheik. They caught hold of him and carried him off in triumph, despite his protests, while, thanks to my blue coat, I made my escape humbly on the back of a ragged beggar."

Now let us hear Julien, the principal actor in the scene:

Julien's Itinerary.

"What surprised me greatly was to see six Arabs come to carry me on land, while there were only two for Monsieur, which amused him much, to see me carried like a reliquary. I do not know whether my apparel seemed to them more brilliant than Monsieur's: he wore a brown frock-coat and buttons of the same; mine was whitish, with buttons of white metal which gave off a certain gleam in the bright sunshine: this may, no doubt, have caused the mistake.

"We went, on Wednesday the 1st of October, to the monks of Jaffa, who belong to the Order of Cordeliers, speaking Latin and Italian, but very little French. They received us very well, and did all that in them lay to procure for us all we needed."

I arrived in Jerusalem. On the advice of the Fathers of the convent, I passed quickly through the Holy City to go to the Jordan. After stopping at the monastery at Bethlehem, I set out with an Arab escort; I stopped at St. Sabas. At midnight, I found myself on the shore of the Dead Sea.

My Itinerary.

"When one travels in Judæa, at first the heart is seized with a great sense of tediousness; but when, as you pass from solitude to solitude, space stretches limitless before your eyes, that feeling gradually wears away, and you experience a secret terror which, far from casting down the soul, gives courage and raises the spirit. Extraordinary views discover on every side a land laboured by miracles: the burning sun, the swooping eagle, the barren fig-tree, all the poetry, all the scenes of the Scriptures are there. Every name contains a mystery; every grotto declares the future; every summit resounds with a prophet's accents. God Himself has spoken on those shores: the dried-up torrents, the cleft rocks, the half-open tombs testify to the working of wonders; the desert appears to be still mute with terror, and it is as though it had not ventured to break the silence since it heard the voice of the Almighty.

"We descended from the brow of the mountain, in order to go to spend the night on the shore of the Dead Sea, and next to go up to the Jordan [696].

. . . . . . . . . .

"We broke up our camp, and made our way for an hour and a half with excessive difficulty through a fine white dust. We were proceeding towards a small wood of balsam-trees and tamarinds, which I saw to my great astonishment rising from the midst of a sterile soil. Suddenly the Bethlemites stopped and pointed to something which I had not perceived, at the bottom of a ravine. Without being able to say what it was, I caught a glimpse as though of a kind of sand moving over the immobility of the soil. I approached this singular object, and I saw a yellow river which I had some difficulty in distinguishing from the sand of its two banks. It was deeply embanked, and flowed slowly in a thick stream: it was the Jordan....

"The Bethlemites stripped and plunged into the Jordan. I did not dare to follow their lead, because of the fever which still troubled me."

Jerusalem.

We returned to Jerusalem; Julien was not much struck with the sacred places: like a true philosopher, he was dry [697].

I left Jerusalem, arrived at Jaffa, and took ship for Alexandria. From Alexandria I went to Cairo, and I left Julien with M. Drovetti, who had the kindness to charter an Austrian vessel for me for Tunis. Julien continued his journal at Alexandria:

"There are Jews here," he says, "who gamble in stocks, as they do wherever they are. Half a league from the city stands Pompey's Column, which is in reddish granite, mounted on a block of hewn stone."

My Itinerary.

"On the 23rd of November, at midday, the wind having become favourable, I went on board the vessel. I embraced M. Drovetti on the shore, and we made mutual promises of friendship and remembrance: I am paying my debt to-day.

"We heaved the anchor at two o'clock. A pilot brought us out of harbour. The wind was faint and southerly. We kept for three days within sight of Pompey's Column, which we discovered on the horizon. On the evening of the third day we heard the evening gun of the port of Alexandria. This was as it were the signal for our definite departure, for the north wind rose and we made sail for the west.

"On the 1st of December, the wind, veering due west, stopped our way. Gradually it fell to the south-west and turned into a tempest which did not cease until we reached Tunis. To occupy my time, I copied out and set in order my notes on this voyage and my descriptions for the Martyrs. At night, I walked the deck with the mate, Captain Dinelli. Nights spent amid the waves, on a vessel beaten by the storm, are not barren; the uncertainty of our future gives objects their true value: the land, contemplated from the midst of a tempestuous sea, resembles life as it presents itself to a man about to die [698]."

We continued our voyage and anchored before the Kerkenna Isles.

My Itinerary.

"A gale rose, to our great delight, from the south-east, and in five days we arrived in the waters of the island of Malta. We came into sight of it on Christmas Eve; but, on Christmas Day, the wind, shifting to west-north-west, drove us to the south of Lampedusa. We remained for eighteen days off the east coast of the Kingdom of Tunis, between life and death. I shall never in my life forget the day of the 28th.

"We cast anchor before the Kerkenna Isles. For eight days we lay at anchor in the Gulf of Cabes, where I saw the commencement of the year 1807. Under how many planets and amid what varied fortunes had I already seen the years renew for me, years which pass so quickly or which are so long! How far away from me were those times of my childhood in which, with a heart beating with joy, I received the paternal blessing and the paternal gifts! How I used to look forward to New Year's Day! And now, on a foreign vessel, in the middle of the sea, within sight of a barbarous land, that New Year's Day sped for me without witnesses, without pleasures, without the kisses of my family, without the fond wishes of happiness which a mother shapes with such sincerity for her sons! That day, born in the womb of the tempests, let fall on my head nought but cares, regrets and silver hairs."

The Kerkenna Isles.

Julien is exposed to the same fate, and he rebukes me for one of those fits of impatience of which I have, fortunately, corrected myself.

Julien's Itinerary.

"We were very near the island of Malta, and we had reason to fear that we might be seen by some English vessel, which could have forced us to enter the harbour; but we encountered none. Our crew was greatly exhausted, and the wind continued to be unfavourable to us. The captain, seeing on his chart an anchorage called Kerkenna, from which we were at no great distance, made sail for it without telling Monsieur, who, seeing that we were approaching that anchorage, became angry at not having been consulted, and said to the captain that he ought to continue his course, having been through worse weather. But we had gone too far to resume our course, and besides, the captain's prudence was highly approved, for that night the wind grew much stronger and the sea very bad. Finding that we were obliged to remain in the anchoring-place four-and-twenty hours longer than was foreseen, Monsieur gave the captain lively marks of his discontent, in spite of the good reasons which the latter gave him.

"We had been a month at sea, and we only wanted seven or eight hours to reach the port of Tunis. Suddenly the wind became so violent that we were obliged to stand out to sea, and we remained three weeks without being able to touch the port. Thereupon Monsieur once more reproached the captain with having wasted thirty-six hours at the anchorage. It was impossible to persuade him that a greater misfortune would have befallen us if the captain had been less foreseeing. The misfortune which I anticipated was to see our provisions diminishing, without knowing when we should arrive."

At last I trod Carthaginian soil. I found the most generous hospitality at the hands of M. and Madame Devoise. Julien describes my host well; he also speaks of the country and the Jews:

"They pray and weep," says he.

An American man-of-war brig gave me a passage on board, and I crossed the lake of Tunis to go to the port.

"On the way," says Julien, "I asked Monsieur if he had taken the gold which he had put into the writing-table in his bed-room; he told me he had forgotten it, and I was obliged to return to Tunis."

I can never keep money in my mind.

When I arrived from Alexandria, we cast anchor opposite the ruins of the city of Hannibal [699]. I looked at them from the deck without guessing what they were. I saw a few Moorish huts, a Mussulman hermitage on the point of a prominent head-land, some sheep grazing among ruins, ruins so unapparent that I could hardly distinguish them from the ground on which they stood: that was Carthage. I visited it before embarking for Europe.

My Itinerary.

"From the top of Byrsa, the eye embraces the ruins of Carthage, which are more numerous than is generally believed: they resemble those of Sparta, having nothing in a good state of preservation, but occupying a considerable space. I saw them in the month of February; the fig-trees, olive-trees, and carobs were already putting out their young leaves; large angelicas and acanthas formed tufts of verdure among the ruins of marble of every colour. In the distance, I turned my gaze over the isthmus, a two-fold sea, far islands, a smiling country-side, bluey lakes, azured mountains; I descried forests, ships, aqueducts, Moorish villages, Mohammedan hermitages, minarets, and the white houses of Tunis. Millions of starlings, gathered into battalions and resembling clouds, flew above my head. Surrounded by the greatest and most touching memories, I thought of Dido [700], of Sophonisba [701], of Hasdrubal's noble spouse [702]; I viewed the vast plains in which the legions of Hannibal, Scipio [703], and Cæsar [704] lie buried; my eyes tried to recognise the site of the Palace of Utica. Alas, the remains of the palace of Tiberius [705] still exist at Capri, and we look in vain at Utica for the spot where stood Cato's [706] house! Lastly, the terrible Vandals, the light Moors passed in turn before my memory, which showed me, as a final picture, St. Louis dying on the ruins of Carthage [707]."

The ruins of Carthage.

Julien, like myself, takes his last view of Africa at Carthage [708].

Julien briefly narrates our passage from Tunis to the Bay of Gibraltar; from Algeciras he promptly arrives at Cadiz, and from Cadiz at Granada. Careless of Blanca, he observes only that "the Alhambra and other lofty buildings stand on rocks of immense height." My own Itinéraire does not give many more details on Granada; I content myself with saying:

"The Alhambra seems to me to be worthy of note, even after the temples of Greece. The valley of Granada is delightful, and much resembles that of Sparta: it is easy to conceive that the Moors regret so fine a country."

I have described the Alhambra in the Dernier des Abencerages.[709] The Alhambra, the Generalife, the Monte-Santo are impressed upon my mind like those fantastic landscapes of which often, at peep of day, one imagines that one catches a glimpse in the first brilliant ray of the dawn. I still feel that I possess sufficient sense of nature to paint the Vega [710]; but I should not dare to attempt it, for fear of "the Archbishop of Granada [711]." During my stay in the town of the sultanas, a guitar-player, driven by an earthquake from a village through which I had just passed, had devoted himself to me. Deaf as a post, he followed me wherever I went: when I sat down on a ruin in the Palace of the Moors, he stood and sang by my side, accompanying himself on his guitar. The harmonious vagrant would not perhaps have composed the symphony of the Creation[712], but his dusky skin showed through his tattered cloak, and he would have had a great need to write as did Beethoven [713] to Fraülein Breuning:

"Revered Eleonora, my dearest friend, how gladly would I be the possessor of a rabbits'-wool waistcoat of your knitting."

I travelled from end to end of that Spain in which, sixteen years later, Heaven reserved to me a great part, that of aiding in stamping out anarchy in a noble nation and delivering a Bourbon: the honour of our arms was restored, and I should have saved the Legitimacy, had the Legitimacy been able to understand the conditions of its continuance.

Julien does not allow me to escape until he has brought me back to the Place Louis XV. at three o'clock in the afternoon of the 5th of June 1807. From Granada he conducts me to Aranjuez, to Madrid, to the Escurial, whence he jumps to Bayonne.

"We left Bayonne," he says, "on Tuesday the 9th of May, for Pau, Tarbes, Barèges and Bordeaux, where we arrived on the 18th, very tired, and both with a touch of fever. We left on the 19th and went to Angoulême and Tours, and we arrived on the 28th at Blois, where we slept. On the 31st we continued our journey to Orleans, and later we spent our last night at Angerville."

Back in France.

I was there, at one stage from a country-seat [714] whose inhabitants my long voyage had not caused me to forget. But the gardens of Armida, where were they? Two or three times, when returning to the Pyrenees, I have caught sight of the Column of Méréville [715]; like Pompey's Column, it acquainted me with the presence of the desert: like my fortunes at sea, all has changed.

I reached Paris before the news I sent of myself: I had out-distanced my life. Insignificant as are the letters which I wrote, I go through them as one looks over inferior sketches representing the places one has visited. Those notes, dated from Modon, Athens, Zea, Constantinople, Jaffa, Jerusalem, Alexandria, Tunis, Granada, Madrid, and Burgos, those lines written on every manner of paper, with every manner of ink, carried by all the winds, interest me. I love unrolling even my very firmans: it is a pleasure to me to touch the vellum, to observe the elegant caligraphy, to wonder at the pomp of the style. How great a personage I must have been! And what poor devils we are, with our letters and our forty-sou passports, beside those lords of the turban!

Osman Seïd, Pasha of Morea, thus addresses to whomsoever it may concern my firman for Athens:

"Men of law of the townships of Misitra [716] and Argos, cadis, nadirs, and eflendis, of whom may the wisdom ever increase; you who are the honour of your peers and our great men, vaïvodes, and you through whose eyes your master sees, who replace him in each of your jurisdictions, public officers and business men, whose credit can only grow greater.

"We inform you that of the nobles of France, one noble in particular from Paris, the bearer of this order, accompanied by an armed janissary and by a servant as his escort, has solicited permission and explained his intention to pass through some of the places and localities which are within your jurisdictions in order to go to Athens, which is an isthmus lying beyond and separated from your jurisdictions.

"Wherefore, effendis, vaïvodes, and all others above-mentioned, when the aforesaid person shall arrive at the places subject to your jurisdiction, you shall take the greatest care that he be treated with all the particular consideration of which friendship makes a law, etc., etc

"Year 1221 of the Hegira."

My passport from Constantinople for Jerusalem says:

"To the sublime tribunal of His Grandeur the Cadi of Kouds [717], Scherif and Most Excellent Effendi:

"Most Excellent Effendi, may Your Grandeur seated on your august tribunal accept our sincere blessings and our affectionate greetings.

"We inform you that a noble personage from the Court of France, named François Auguste de Chateaubriand, is at present on his way towards you to make the holy pilgrimage (of the Christians)."

Would we extend a like protection to the unknown traveller with the mayors and gendarmes who inspect his passport? In these firmans we can also read the revolutions of the nations: how many "permits" has it required that God should grant to the empires, before a Tartar slave could lay orders upon a vaïvode of Misistra, that is, a magistrate of Sparta; before a Mussulman could recommend a Christian to the Cadi of Kouds, that is, of Jerusalem!

The Itinéraire has entered into the elements that compose my life. When I set out in 1806, a pilgrimage to Jerusalem appeared a great undertaking. Now that the crowd has followed in my steps and that the whole world is in the diligence, the wonder of it has vanished; I have little left of my own save Tunis: people have travelled less in that direction, and it has been allowed that I pointed out the real sights of the ports of Carthage. This creditable letter proves it:

"Monsieur le Vicomte,

"I have just received a plan of the ground and ruins of Carthage, giving the exact outlines and inclinations of the soil; it has been taken trigonometrically on a basis of 1500 meters, and rests upon barometrical observations made with corresponding barometers. It is a work of ten years of precision and patience; and it confirms your opinions regarding the position of the ports of Byrsa.

"With this exact plan I have gone over all the ancient texts, and have, I believe, determined the outer circumference and the other portions of the Cothon, Byrsa, Megara, etc., etc. I wish to do you the right which is your due upon so many scores.

"If you are not afraid to see me swoop down upon your genius with my trigonometry and my heavy erudition, I will be with you at the first sign from yourself. If we, my father [718] and I, follow you in literature longissimo intervallo, at least we shall have tried to imitate you in the noble independence of which you set France so fine an example.

"I have the honour to be, and I am proud of it, your frank admirer,

"Dureau de La Malle [719]."

My geographical accuracy.

So accurate a rectification of localities would formerly have been sufficient to give me a name in geography. From this time forward, if I still had a mania for being talked about, I do not know where I could go in order to attract the attention of the public: perhaps I should resume my old plan of discovering the passage to the North Pole; perhaps I should ascend the Ganges. There I should see the long, straight, dark line of the woods which defend the approach to the Himalayas; when, after reaching the neck which joins the two principal peaks of Mount Ganghur, I descried the immeasurable amphitheatre of the eternal snows, and should ask my guides, as did Heber [720], the Anglican Bishop of Calcutta, the name of the other mountains in the East, they would reply that they marked the border of the Chinese Empire: well and good! But to return from the Pyramids is as though you returned from Montlhéry [721]. By the by, I remember that a pious antiquary, who lived near Saint-Denis in France wrote to me to ask if Pontoise did not resemble Jerusalem.

The last page of the Itinéraire is as though I had written it this moment, so exactly does it reproduce my present sentiments.

"For twenty years," I said, "I have devoted myself to study amid hazards and troubles of every kind, diversa exsilia et desertas quærere terras: many of the pages of my books have been written under canvas, in the deserts, upon the ocean; I have often held the pen without knowing how I should for a few instants prolong my existence.... If Heaven grant me a repose which I have never tasted, I will try in silence to raise a monument to my country; if Providence refuse me that repose, I must think only of shielding my last days from the cares which have embittered the first. I am no longer young, I no longer have the love of fame; I know that literature, the commerce of which is so sweet when it is secret, only draws down storms upon us from the outside. In any case, I have written enough if my name is to live; far too much if it is to die."

It is possible that my Itinéraire may survive as a manual for the use of Wandering Jews like myself: I have scrupulously noted the halting-places, and drawn a map of the roads. All the travellers to Jerusalem have written to congratulate me and thank me for my accuracy; I will quote one witness [722].

I see before me, of the sites of Syria, Egypt and Carthage, only the spots in harmony with my solitary nature; these pleased me independently of antiquity, art or history. The Pyramids struck me not so much on account of their size, as of the desert against which they were set; Diocletian's Column did not catch my eye as did the segments of the sea along the sands of Lybia. At the Pelusian mouth of the Nile, I should not have wished fora monument to remind me of the scene thus depicted by Plutarch:

"The enfranchised slave, casting his eyes over the shore, spied the old remains of a fishing-boat, which, though not large, would make a sufficient pile for a poor naked body that was not quite entire. While he was collecting the pieces of plank, and putting them together, an old Roman, who had made some of his first campaigns under Pompey, came up, and said to Philip:

"Who are you that are preparing the funeral of Pompey the Great?'

"Philip answered:

"'I am his freedman.'

"'But you shall not,' said the old Roman, 'have this honour entirely to yourself. As a work of piety offers itself, let me have a share in it; that I may not absolutely repent my having passed so many years in a foreign country; but, to compensate many misfortunes, may have the consolation of doing some of the last honours to the greatest general Rome ever produced [723].'"

Cæsar's rival no longer has a tomb near Lybia, and a young Lybian slave-girl has received burial at the hands of a Pompey not far from the Rome whence the great Pompey was banished. From these freaks of fortune one conceives how the Christians used to go and hide themselves in the Thebaïde [724].

The winds have scattered the personages of Europe, Asia, Africa, amid whom I appeared and of whom I have told you: one fell from the Acropolis at Athens, another from the shore of Chios, another flung himself from Mount Sion, yet another will never emerge from the waves of the Nile or the tanks of Carthage. The places themselves have changed: in the same way, as in America, cities have sprung up where I saw forests, an empire is being formed on those sands of Egypt where my eyes encountered only "horizons bare and rounded like the boss of a shield," as the Arab poems say, "and wolves so thin that their jaws are like a cleft stick." Greece has recovered the liberty which I wished her when travelling across her under the guard of a janissary. But does she enjoy her national liberty, or has she merely changed her yoke?

The future of the East.

In some measure I am the last visitor of the Turkish Empire under its old customs. The revolutions which have everywhere immediately preceded, or followed upon, my footsteps have spread over Greece, Syria, Egypt. Is a new East about to be formed? What will it bring forth? Shall we receive our just punishment for having taught the modern art of warfare to nations whose social state is based upon slavery and polygamy? Have we carried civilization beyond our boundaries, or have we brought barbarism within the circle of Christianity? What will result from the new interests, the new political relations, the creation of the Powers which may spring up in the Levant? No one can tell. I do not allow myself to be dazzled by steam-boats and railways, by the sale of the produce of manufactures, and by the fortunes of a few French, English, German, Italian soldiers enrolled in a pasha's service: all that is not civilization. Perhaps we shall behold the return, through the aid of the disciplined troops of future Ibrahims, of the perils which threatened Europe at the time of Charles the Hammer [725], and from which we were saved by the generous Poland. I pity the travellers who shall succeed me: the harem will no longer hide its secrets from them; they will not have seen the old sun of the East and the turban of Mahomet. The little Bedouin called out to me in French, when I passed into the mountains of Judæa:

"Forward, march!"

The order was given, and the East marched.

MEMENTO MORI.

What became of Ulysses' companion, Julien? He asked, when handing me his manuscript, to be made concierge of my house in the Rue d'Enfer: this place was occupied by an old porter and his family, whom I could not send away. The wrath of Heaven having made Julien headstrong and a drunkard, I supported him for a long time; at last we were obliged to part. I gave him a small sum, and granted him a little pension on my privy purse, a somewhat light one, but always copiously filled with excellent notes mortgaged on my castles in Spain. I obtained Julien's admission, at his wish, to the Old Men's asylum: there he finished the last great journey. I shall soon go to occupy his empty bed, even as, in the camp of Etnir-Capi, I slept on a mat from which a plague-stricken Mussulman had just been removed. My vocation is positively for the almshouse, in which the old society lies. It pretends to live, but is none the less at death's door. When it has expired, it will decompose in order to be reproduced under new forms, but it must first succumb; the first necessity for peoples, as for man, is to die:

"When God bloweth, there cometh frost," says Job [726].

[649] This book was written in Paris in 1839, and revised in December 1846.—T.

[650] Diane de Poitiers (1499-1566) was the daughter of Jean de Poitiers, Seigneur de Saint-Vallier, and married in 1512 Louis de Brézé, Comte de Maulevrier, who died in 1531. Some years later she became mistress to Henry II., then Duc d'Orléans, who shortly after his accession created her Duchesse de Valentinois. She retained her empire over the King and her power in France until Henry's death, which occurred in 1559.—T.

[651] Hervé Louis François Joseph Bonaventure Clérel, Comte de Tocqueville (1772-1856) was made a peer of France and a prefect under the Restoration. He was married to Mademoiselle de Rosanbo, a grand-daughter of Malesherbes.—T.

[652] Anne Nicole Marquise de Senozan (1718-1794), née de Lamoignon de Blancménil, sister to Malesherbes and wife of the Président de Senozan. She mounted the scaffold on the 10th of May 1794, on the same day as Madame Élisabeth, at the age of seventy-six, and her estate passed later into the possession of her grand-nephew, the Comte de Tocqueville.—B.

[653] The Château de Verneuil in the Department of Seine-et-Oise.—B.

[654] Alexis Charles Henri Clérel de Tocqueville (1805-1859) was appointed an assistant judge, and in 1831 was sent to America, in company with Gustave de Beaumont, to study the penal system on that continent. On his return he published a treatise on this subject, and in 1835 appeared his great work on American Democracy, which secured his election to the Academy of Moral Science in 1839 and to the French Academy in 1841. Two years earlier he had been sent to the Chamber as deputy for the Arrondissement of Valognes, in Normandy, in which his father's property of Tocqueville was situated, and this seat he retained until his withdrawal from political life in 1851. He was Minister of Foreign Affairs under the Presidency of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte from June to October 1849.—T.

[655] Michel Lepelletier de Saint-Fargeau (1760-1793), a renegade representative of the Paris nobility, which sent him to the States-General in 1789. In 1792 he became a member of the Convention, where he voted in favour of the death of Louis XVI.; and on the 20th of January 1793, the day before the execution of the King, he was assassinated in a restaurant by an old Bodyguard called Paris. His body was conveyed to the Pantheon in state, and the Convention adopted his daughter, then eight years old.—T.

[656] The Château du Ménil is in the commune of Fontenay-Saint-Père, canton of Limay, Arrondissement of Mantes, Department of Seine-et-Oise. It is now the property of M. le Marquis de Rosanbo.—B.

[657] The Château de Mézy is in the canton of Meulan, Department of Seine-et-Oise.—B.

[658] The Château de Méréville is in Beauce. It had formerly belonged to a celebrated Court banker, Jean Joseph de La Borde, guillotined in 1794, who had turned it into a dwelling of finished splendour. The park, laid out by Robert, the landscape-painter, was a marvel. One of La Borde's daughters had married the Comte de Noailles, later Duc de Mouchy.—B.

[659] Blanca is the heroine of the Aventures du dernier Abencerage.—T.

[660] Marie Anne Louise Adélaïde Marquise de Coislin (1732-1817), née de Mailly, of the Rubempré and Nesle branch, was the daughter of Louis de Mailly, Comte de Rubempré and cousin to the four Mesdemoiselles de Mailly, daughters of the Marquis de Nesle—the Comtesse de Mailly, the Comtesse de Vintimille, the Duchesse de Lauraguais, and the Marquise de La Tournelle, afterwards Duchesse de Châteauroux—who successively became mistresses to Louis XV. She married first, in 1750, Charles Georges René de Cambout, Marquis de Coislin, who died in 1771, leaving no children living. More than twenty years later, in 1793, the Marquise de Coislin, then over sixty, married one of her cousins, twelve years younger than herself, Louis Marie Duc de Mailly, who died and left her a widow for the second time in 1795. There is reason to believe that this marriage was never legally consecrated, as the Duchesse de Mailly continued to be called Marquise de Coislin.—B.

[661] Now the Place de la Concorde. The house stands at the corner of the Rue Royale, facing the Ministry of Marine, formerly the Crown Wardrobe.—T.

[662] This title is the appanage of the Marquisate of Nesle.—T.

[663] Killed at the Battle of Courtrai in 1302.—T.

[664] Claude Joseph Vernet (1714-1789), the father of Carle and grandfather of Horace Vernet. Louis XV. commissioned him to paint the principal French ports. The majority of his sea-pieces are now at the Louvre.—T.

[665] Marie Anne de Mailly (1719-1744) married the Marquis de La Tournelle in 1734. He left her a widow at the age of twenty-three, and she became mistress, in succession to her sisters Mesdames de Vintimille and de Mailly, to Louis XV., who created her Duchesse de Châteauroux. She obtained the support of the Duc de Richelieu, and was for a time all-powerful at Court, accompanying Louis at the head of his armies in Flanders and Alsace. In 1744, when the King fell ill, she was sent back to Paris in disgrace, but was restored to favour on his recovery, and was on the point of becoming Superintendent of the Dauphiness' Household, when she died a sudden death, attributed by some to poison.—T.

[666] Louise Julie Comtesse de Mailly (1710-1751), the first of the Nesle family to become the mistress of Louis XV. She amended her life when deserted in favour of one of her sisters, and was doubtless the most estimable and sympathetic of the four.—T.

[667] A reference to an epigram in the Anthology.—B.

[668] Queen Marie Leczinska (1703-1768), daughter of Stanislaus Leczinski, ex-King of Poland, and married to Louis XV. in 1725.—T.

[669] Madame Suard (1750-1830), née Panckoucke, sister of Panckoucke, the printer, founder of the Moniteur universel, and herself the author of several agreeable works. Her salon was a favourite meeting-place of the Encyclopædists under Louis XVI.—B.

[670] Jean Baptiste Antoine Suard (1734-1817) took part in the editing of an English newspaper printed in Paris, became a member of the Academy in 1772, and obtained a censorship in 1774. At the Revolution, he became a moderate member of the new party. In 1803 he was appointed perpetual secretary to the Institute. His works consist mainly of translations from the English: Cook's Voyages, Robertson's History of America, etc.—T.

[671] Pierre Michel Hennin (1728-1807) was Secretary of Embassy in Poland in 1759, Resident at Warsaw in 1763, Resident at Geneva in 1765, and in 1779 became First Clerk at the Foreign Office, a post in which he did eminent service until 1792, when he was dismissed by General Dumouriez. He was obliged to sell his collections, and took to "scribbling fat novels" for a livelihood, working at learning languages and at his writing until his death, on the 5th of July 1807, at the age of nearly eighty.—B.

[672] Claude Antoine de Bésiade, Duc d'Avaray (1740-1829), brother to the Comte d'Avaray, Louis XVIII.'s companion in exile and chief agent. D'Avaray was imprisoned during the Terror, recovered his liberty on the 9 Thermidor, and emigrated, returning to France in 1814. Louis XVIII. raised him to the peerage in 1815, created him a duke in 1817, and made him his First Chamberlain in 1820.—B.

[673] Cinq jours à Clermont (Auvergne) 2, 3, 4, 5 et 6 août 1805 and Le Mont-Blanc, paysages de montagnes, fin d'août 1805. They appear in Vol. VI. of the complete works.—B.

[674] Honoré d'Urfé (1567-1625), after a life spent in war and diplomacy, wrote the famous pastoral romance of the Astrée, in which he depicted the happiness of the shepherds of the Lignon. The singular book was received with the greatest favour, and gave rise to a whole school of bucolic novelists. D'Urfé died before completing his work, and his secretary, Baro, finished it from the author's manuscripts or his own imagination.—T.

[675] Claude Ignace Brugière de Barante (1745-1814). Napoleon dismissed him because of the indulgence shown by him to Madame de Staël, and he died at the moment when the return of the Bourbons appeared to promise him a just reparation.—B.

[676] Louis Nicolas Philippe Auguste Comte de Forbin (1779-1841), a successful writer and painter, and a member of the Academy of Fine Arts. Under the Restoration he became Director of the Museums.—T.

[677] Mathurin Régnier (1573-1613), the first of the French satiric poets. He received the tonsure at the age of thirteen, obtained a rich canonry before he was thirty, and died at forty of his pleasures and excesses.—T.

[678] Oppian, Cynegetica, II. 348.—B.

[679] Jeanne Françoise Thévenin (1763-1841), known as Sophie Devienne, acted at the Comédie Française from 1785 to 1813, and was one of the best "waiting-maids" at that classic theatre.—B.

[680] St. Pothin (87-177), one of the first apostles to the Gauls, became Bishop of Lyons, where he suffered martyrdom at the age of nearly ninety years. He is honoured on the 2nd of June.—T.

[681] St. Ireneus (circa 120—circa 202) succeeded St. Pothin in the Bishopric of Lyons, and suffered martyrdom like his predecessor, his feast falling on the 28th of June.—T.

[682] François de Mandelot (1520-1588), Governor of Lyonnais, distinguished himself by his wholesale murder of the Lyons Protestants on St. Bartholomew's Night.—T.

[683] The Allées des Brotteaux, Lyons, where the condemned were shot under the Revolution.—T.

[684] Loyse Labbé (1526-1566), known as la Belle Cordière, married a rich merchant cord-spinner of Lyons called Perrin. She had been well educated, devoted herself to literature, and left a number of poems.—T.

[685] St. Cyprian (circa 200-258), Bishop of Carthage, persecuted under Decius, and exiled and martyred under Valerian. He was the author of the famous treatise on the Lapsed from which the above quotation is taken. St. Cyprian is honoured on the 16th of September.—T.

[686] Eustache Le Sueur (1617-1655), known as the French Raphael, the first painter of the French school under Louis XIV. Persecuted by his envious rivals, he retired to the Chartreuse on the death of his wife, and painted for the monastery his greatest work, the Life of St. Bruno, in twenty-two pictures.—T.

[687] St. Bruno (circa 1040-1101), Founder of the Carthusian Order, and honoured on the 6th of October.—T.

[688] The certificate of death has since been discovered. Madame de Caud died in the Marais, at No. 6, Rue d'Orléans, on the 18 Brumaire, Year XIII (9 November 1804).—B.

[689] On the 13th of November 1804, Chateaubriand, who was then staying at Villeneuve-sur-Yonne with his friend Joubert, wrote to Chênedollé:

"Madame de Caud is no more. She died in Paris on the 9th. We have lost the most beautiful soul, the most exalted genius, that ever existed. You see that I am born for every sorrow. In how few days has Lucile gone to join Pauline [Madame de Beaumont]! Come, my dear friend, and weep with me this winter, in January. You will find a man who is inconsolable, but who is your friend for life.—Joubert sends you a million loves."—B.

[690] Chateaubriand's family at that date comprised Madame la Comtesse de Marigny; Madame la Comtesse de Chateaubourg, and their children; the daughter of the Comtesse Julie de Farcy; and the sons of the Comte de Chateaubriand.—B.

[691] The juxtaposition of the names of Julien and Clarke, is somewhat forced. Edward Clarke was not Cook's valet, but his companion and his rival in fame. He three times circumnavigated the world. Both left Plymouth together, on the 12th of July 1776, Captain Cook commanding the Discovery and Captain Clarke the Resolution. After the death of Cook, killed by the natives of Owhyhee, on the 14th of February 1779, Clarke succeeded him in the command of the expedition, and himself died as he was arriving in Kamchatka. The Discovery and the Resolution returned to England on the 4th of October 1780.—B.

[692] I omit a portion of the extracts from the servant's Itinerary. These will be indicated in their places.—T.

[693] At Trieste.—T.

[694] De Sparte et d'Athènes.—Author's Note.

[695] I omit Julien's description of the streets of Constantinople.—T.

[696] I omit a quotation from Julien's narrative.—T.

[697] I omit Julien's observations here.—T.

[698] I omit a quotation from Julien's Itinerary.—T.

[699] Hannibal (247-183 B.C.), the famous Carthaginian general.—T.

[700] Dido Queen of Tyre founded Carthage circa 860 B.C.—T.

[701] Sophonisba (235-203 B.C.), daughter of the third Hasdrubal, was betrothed to Masinissa King of Massylia and Numidia, but married in his stead his rival Syphax. Masinissa recaptured his domains from the latter, and with them his wife, whom he married. When Scipio, however, insisted upon Sophonisba's appearance in his triumph in Rome, Masinissa, to save her from this disgrace, sent her poison. Her story is the subject of one of Voltaire's tragedies.—T.

[702] When the fourth Hasdrubal (170-100 B.C.), then commander of Carthage, surrendered to Scipio, his wife, horrified at his treachery, killed her children before his eyes, and then threw herself into the flames, 146 B.C.—T.

[703] Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus (circa 235-184 B.C.).—T.

[704] Caius Julius Cæsar (100-44 B.C.) defeated Metellus Scipio and Cato at Carthage in 46 B.C.—T.

[705] Tiberius Claudius Nero (42 B.C.-37 A.D.), the second Roman Emperor. Capri contains the ruins of his twelve palaces.—T.

[706] Marcus Portius Cato (95-46 B.C.), known as Cato the Younger, or Uticensis, sided against Cæsar with Pompey, and retired to Utica after the defeat of the latter. He prepared to resist Cæsar in Africa, but when Metellus had been beaten, stabbed himself rather than fall into his enemy's hands.—T.

[707] In 1270, on his way to Palestine, in the course of his second (the Eighth) Crusade.—T.

[708] I omit this portion of Julien's Itinerary.—T.

[709] Written under the Empire, but first published in 1827, in Volume XVI. of the Complete Works, with the title, Les Aventures du dernier Abencerage.—B.

[710] The beautiful valley overlooking Granada referred to above.—T.

[711] Cf. Le Sage, Gil Blas.—T.

[712] By Joseph Haydn (1732-1809).—T.

[713] Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), the great composer.—T.

[714] The Château de Malesherbes, situated at six kilometers from Angerville, and belonging to Louis de Chateaubriand, the writer's nephew. It is to-day the property of Madame la Marquise de Beaufort, née de Chateaubriand.—T.

[715] The column standing in the grounds of the Château de Méréville, equalling the column of the Place Vendôme in height, and commanding a view of over twenty leagues in extent.—B.

[716] Sparta.—Author's Note.

[717] Jerusalem.—Author's Note.

[718] Jean Baptiste René Dureau de La Malle (1742-1807), a native of San Domingo, who settled in Paris and devoted his large fortune to literature. He published translations of Seneca (1776), Sallust (1808), and Tacitus (1793), the last of which was twice reprinted (1808 and 1816), and he was at work on a translation of Livy when he died. He became a member of the Institute in 1804.—T.

[719] Adolphe Jules César Auguste Dureau de La Malle (1777-1857), author of a number of learned works and some poems, and a considerable authority on the geography and statistics of the nations of antiquity. In the year in which the above letter was written he published his Géographie physique de la Méditerranée et de la mer Noire. He was admitted in 1818 to the Academy of Inscriptions, and in 1840 published his greatest work, the Économie politique des Romains.—T.

[720] Reginald Heber, Bishop of Calcutta (1783-1826), was appointed to his bishopric in 1822. He was the author of a volume of Hymns (1819), and of a narrative of a Journey through India, published after his death by his widow.—T.

[721] A market town in the Department of Seine-et-Oise, some twelve miles from Paris.—T.

[722] I omit this letter and some others addressed to the author from the East; also a letter addressed by Fénelon to Bossuet on the eve of the former's departure for Greece.—T.

[723] Langhorne's Plutarch: Life of Pompey.—T.

[724] I omit a quotation from the Anthology.—T.

[725] Charles Martel, or the Hammer, Duke of Austrasia (circa 691-741), reigned over France with the title of Mayor of the Palace, and in 732 gained a complete victory over the Saracens between Tours and Poitiers, which put an end to the Mussulman invasion, and assured the Christianization of Europe.—T.

[726] Job, xxxvii. 10.—T.